So it was that the girls found their places; Ann Marie on a horse, Spade on a wire stretched tight, Diamond flying through the air, and Lucky marching with the band. I watched them with as much pride as if they were my own, four queen bees in the middle of the circus’s great humming hive.
Chapter 23
“She took a deep breath. Everything was fresh. The bark she was eating smelled sweet, almost like candy. The sun was beating down on her body, covering her like a shield with its warmth.”
“That’s so beautiful, Aunt Donatella,” Spade would say to me each time I began the story she loved to tell with me. “Making it into a story makes it hurt less, at least if it has a happy ending—right, Emily?” She reached over and patted the elephant’s leg. Emily was standing quietly beside us as we sat on a hay bale in her pen. Occasionally she stroked Spade’s dark hair with her trunk.
I closed my eyes, picturing the group of elephants, imagining the way the sun felt on their backs. “All her few years before that day,” I went on, “Emily had felt safe with her herd. It must have been an ordinary day. She was out walking with her mother, aunts, and sisters, who grazed peacefully near her. Maybe she saw something in the distance, and went to look.”
I opened my eyes and looked into Spade’s. They were almost the same color as Emily’s, a luminous dark brown.
“Maybe it was a creek,” she said. “And Emily thought, wouldn’t it be great to jump in?”
I nodded. “So she walked to the water all by herself.”
“She jumped into the creek and got so clean, she wanted to show her mother so she blew her trumpet.”
I hesitated. “We don’t have to tell the rest of the story now. Don’t you want to get some grass for Emily?”
“No, Donatella, we have to finish. Otherwise Emily’s stuck in the middle, just remembering.”
“Okay, but it’s hard,” I sighed. “There were two men hiding in the bushes, carrying ropes and chains, staking out their claim, and this was their chance, a young elephant all alone. They knew her mother had to be close by, and she could be very dangerous to them.”
“What did they do?”
“They probably surrounded Emily and dropped ropes around her ankles and legs so fast she couldn’t escape. I’m sure her mother came charging toward her as she called out for help.”
“Emily’s mother cried when she saw her child being taken away,” Spade added.
“The men used a tranquilizer dart to make her mother fall asleep. Then they put Emily in a wagon with bars and Emily watched as her mother got smaller and smaller, until she wasn’t even there.”
Spade jumped in again. “Her mother never got to see how clean she was from her swim.” Then Spade crossed her arms. “I’ll never let anything bad happen to Emily again.”
“I know you won’t,” I said. “Let’s go get an ice.”
The rest of the story I kept to myself.
Two days after she was captured, the poachers wheeled Emily up the gangplank of a cargo ship called the Pacific, which was headed for the States. They took her below the decks, to the dark, airless space at the bottom of the ship, and there she stayed for weeks. Emily had never been alone before. She was very frightened. When she trumpeted, the men on the ship yelled and threw water on her. Once, when she tried to get loose, they’d beaten her with a stick. Her stomach became upset, and she couldn’t keep her food down. I remembered my own sea voyage and thought about how much worse Emily’s must have been.
By the time Emily arrived at the Circus of the Queens, she was as depressed as an elephant could be. I’d never thought I would feel such empathy for an animal. Like me, she arrived to find herself in an alien land, mourning the family she’d lost.
The men who sold Emily to Vladimir told him she’d been born into captivity, but it didn’t take long to figure out that she’d been poached from the wild. Her fear of humans was obvious. But by then, it was too late. And elephants played an important part in most circuses. Dressed in embroidered silk with gold fringes and small mirrors sewn on to deflect the evil eye, trained to do endearing tricks and to show off their immense strength, these astounding exotic creatures equaled money. No one would be sending Emily home for a grand reunion. I accepted that, but that didn’t mean it sat well.
The first time Spade and I visited Emily, we looked into her dark brown eyes and saw an infinite sea of sadness. She needed some kindness, and Spade had some to spare. Spade would gaze at Emily until their eyes met and speak to her from her heart. Then I’d lift Spade up onto my shoulders, where she’d try in vain to wrap her small arms around the elephant’s neck, singing to her gently. Emily seemed to understand the sincerity behind the words of this small two-legged creature.
The singing helped calm Emily down. Gradually, over the months, her memories of being torn away from her mother and of the ocean crossing, things that had haunted her in her sleep, faded into peaceful dreams.
Spade and I made up our own ending to Emily’s story. Spade would ask, as though she were Emily, “Will my mother and sisters save me?”
I’d answer, “Emily closed her eyes and squeezed them really tight, until she saw her mother standing right in front of her. She imagined the way she felt with her mother’s trunk wrapped around her own, safe and warm.”
Then together we’d say, “And she didn’t feel that way again until she met Bess, who became her best friend.”
If Emily was the lost soul, Bess was born the star, the prize everyone wanted. Circuses everywhere were looking for ways to attract larger audiences. Wild West shows were gaining popularity. Several years back in Kansas City, a circus had imported eight polar bears from England. Now wild animal shows were exhibiting on the pier in Venice, California. This worried Vladimir, but still he felt he held a winning hand. He had four queens and an elephant named Bess.
“Look how big she is, Spade,” he’d brag. “She’s more than two feet taller than me, and I’m five foot ten. Yet her trunk is so sensitive it can pick up a single blade of grass! Did you know that an elephant has over sixty thousand muscles in its trunk?”
Bess was a gentle giant with a great sense of humor. She loved sucking up water and spraying it on Vladimir. “How can I get angry?” he’d say. “Even the Hindu god Ganesha has her face, and more often than not Ganesha has multiple trunks. Can you imagine what Bess would do with that?”
Vladimir took pleasure in all Bess’s antics. Anything she did entertained him. A stranger, hearing him, could be forgiven for thinking he was discussing one of his daughters. He’d waylay me and Spade, insisting that we stop to hear yet again about all of Bess’s accomplishments and how she came to our circus. We’d be standing up when he started. After a while, I’d notice Spade leaning against a wall, and before he was done, we were all sitting on bales of hay.
Bess’s had been a happy childhood, he’d tell us. He wanted everyone to understand that he wasn’t the sort of man who went around stealing animals in the wild from their mothers.
“The broker in Thailand told me they called her Busaba—that means ‘flower.’” He said our little Busaba learned to come to her name within a month after she was born. “She’s not only pretty”—he’d wink—“she’s smart.”
Born into captivity, thousands of miles away from anywhere our circus traveled, like other elephants raised in an urban environment, Bess began her training when she was only two days old, quickly learning the meaning of yes and no.
The villagers thought Bess was the prettiest little elephant. They smothered her with love and attention. “How could they not?” Vladimir would say. “Look at her.” Spade and I would just grin at each other as we slumped against the hay bales. It made us happy that Vladimir cared for her as he did. I thought that perhaps Bess was just as therapeutic for Vladimir as she was for Emily, though of course I didn’t tell him that.
“They painted Bess for parades, and the wome
n made her costumes,” Vladimir would say dreamily. “The villagers wanted her to always know that she was loved.” Then he’d take a tissue from his pocket and turn away, just long enough to wipe a tear from his cheek.
Every day Bess went out with her handler. They would stand on street corners like buskers in a carnival. Her broker said it was clear to everyone that Bess had charm, a natural presence, the kind you are either born with or not. She could work a crowd simply by standing. She was magic!
The broker—“really more of an animal talent scout,” Vladimir said—had been scouting exotic animals for ten years. One morning, he came to Bess’s village.
While taking a walk to get in some exercise—“and get things moving, you know what I mean,” Vladimir would say every time, pausing to make certain we understood (every moment that led to Bess’s coming to the Circus of the Queens was important to Vladimir, so we indulged him as he had so many times indulged us)—the broker noticed a sea of people crowding around something, craning their necks. He crossed the street to see what the commotion was about. Rising on tiptoe, he looked over the heads of the crowd and understood. They were all waiting to ride one pretty little elephant. Other elephants were lined up and down the street, ready to go, but only Bess had such an audience.
“He returned to watch Bess for several days.” Vladimir was now sitting on the edge of his seat, as if he were hearing his own story for the first time. “Every day it was the same—lines of parents and children waiting for a moment of this one elephant’s attention. The parents tried to persuade their children that the other elephants would be just as good.” Vladimir grinned. “But the children knew better.”
The broker was a smart man. He knew a good thing when he saw it. He found the little elephant’s owners and went to talk to them. But they clearly had no intention of selling their prize. Every time they refused, he upped his offer, until he reached an amount that would last them most of their lives. Still it wasn’t enough.
Finally, the sum was so elephantine that the owners couldn’t refuse. However, they made him swear on the life of his mother and whatever god he prayed to that Bess would be treated like a princess—no, a queen.
And so it was settled. Vladimir had a spotless reputation for his treatment of animals, and the broker offered Bess to him first. “So she came home with me”—Vladimir’s chest puffed out with pride—“and just as the villagers asked, I’ve always treated her like a queen.”
The broker let everyone know that Bess was first class, and when they loaded her on the ship, that’s exactly how she traveled—with her own enormous suite and a veterinarian to make certain she didn’t get sick.
“Now she’s one of the queens—well, almost.” That was our cue. At this point we’d start to brush off the hay, straighten our clothes, and stand up again. “But, however, you put it, she’s more than an elephant to me.”
Clearly Bess is blessed, I thought to myself. Some animals, like some people, are just born lucky.
¯¯¯
During a Saturday matinee in September, when most children Ann Marie’s age had just returned to school, as the audience began to cheer at what would have normally been the end of Sam’s routine, Sam took a deep breath so she could project her voice and address the audience.
“Today, I have a special guest,” she said after calming them down. “We have been working together for several years, and she asked if she might be able to give a short performance as a gift to her father for his birthday today. Yes, today is the tenth of September, which means it’s Vladimir’s birthday.”
Suddenly the spotlight picked out Ann Marie Heart, who yelled to her father, “Happy birthday, Papa!” The spotlight moved to Vladimir, who had now entered the ring and was standing to the right, joined by Bella, Spade, Diamond, and Lucky.
Dressed in her best sequined scarlet costume, the one that sparkled more than any of the others, Ann Marie prepared herself for what was coming next. She waited for Sam’s commands, and, just as she had done for me with Bella, Ann Marie displayed her talent by standing upright on the back of the Rosinback stallion, Napolean. Step by step, just a little bit at a time, Sam had taught Ann Marie what she needed to know. Anne Marie later grinned, “It was as if Sam was somehow attached to me, talking me through every step until I slid off Napolean’s back and took my final bow.”
Wearing a bright scarlet plume, one exactly like Bella’s, no one in the audience clapped louder or longer than Vladimir for Ann Marie. I could feel Bella squeeze his hand when Ann Marie led the crowd in singing “Happy Birthday” to him.
¯¯¯
“I’m going to wear something scarlet in every performance,” Ann Marie told me. “Just like you wear purple, Aunt Donatella. It sets me apart.” She smiled, thinking she had explained herself well, and in a way I guess she had. Then she giggled and blushed until her cheeks turned her favorite color.
Sometimes I felt as if the ballerina in me lived on in Ann Marie. The School of Russian Ballet had become a pleasant memory, something I was proud of. However, the pain of my lost ambitions would never be completely forgotten. At night in my dreams occasionally I’d wake up shaking, finding myself at the bottom of a ballroom staircase, Hervé’s face like a cloud lingering over me.
¯¯¯
Spade was in many ways the diametric opposite of Ann Marie. She competed with her twin when she performed, but despite their differences they accepted each other without question. Looking back, I believe Ann Marie was born with the most natural talent and Spade with the greater determination, but their friendship and love for each other never faded.
Being the only child of a widowed successful businessman, I found that I enjoyed the commotion of family life and the unconditional love that I never had to ask for but was boundless and freely given.
¯¯¯
Spade was not about to let Ann Marie have all the thunder.
“They stomped their feet and shouted, ‘Spade! Spade! Spade!’ Mama, I felt like I had been put in a cannon and shot to the moon,” Spade confided to Bella the evening after her first public performance.
“At first,” Bella told me, “she paused, as if to get a better understanding of her feelings. And when her thoughts were formed and the words were ready to leave her lips, she started shivering.
“She shivered from head to toe. And it wasn’t because she was cold. Donatella, I believe Spade saw her soul, which had to frighten her. Then she sat up in bed, and with all her heart she said, ‘This is what I was born to do! I think this is why I’m here!’”
“And I knew Spade was speaking the truth.
“When I got up to leave the room, a strange feeling came over me, as strong as the pull of a magnet to a safety pin. I couldn’t deny it. I found myself turning around and going back to where Spade lay. I whispered in her ear, so no one else could hear, ‘It’s understood.’
“And I pulled Spade’s covers around her little body once more and tucked her back in.”
¯¯¯
That day was a place marker. I remember it vividly: the Saturday after Easter.
We were spending a few weeks in Lake Charles, a place I loved for its stately old Victorian mansions that reminded me of the elegant homes of St. Petersburg. The weekend before, I had gone to a small processional to celebrate the Easter holiday. The children had lined Main Street, as excited about the procession as they were about the upcoming circus, shouting, “Here, here!” as the elders and choirboys threw chocolates into the crowd. I was wearing a big light lavender hat I’d bought in a shop the day before, adding some fresh wildflowers so I wouldn’t look out of place.
Caught up in the festivities, I wasn’t looking where I was going, and I’d bumped into a boy. He happened to be a boy we’d recently hired. He was huddled with some other boys his age and an older man. When I realized who it was, I said, “Excuse me, Billy,” but the boy did and said nothing. He just looked s
ideways at his friends. Something struck me as off, but the day was too lovely for thoughts of intrigue; still, I felt as if an unknown shadow was following me. There was something familiar about the older man, but I had barely had a second to see him. He seemed to gasp when I ran into them. I wanted to look back, but instead I just walked on—and when I turned the corner, my feet started to run. I couldn’t get away fast enough and I didn’t know why.
The following Saturday had been the long-awaited day, the day of Spade’s debut on the high wire. I was in the main tent, drinking a cup of tea watching the carnies setting up for her act under Vladimir’s watchful eye, when suddenly one of the barkers ran in and grabbed Vladimir’s arm. “We’ve got trouble,” he said.
It better be important, I thought, running outside to see what it could be. Dust was flying everywhere. One of the carnies was wrestling with a boy of maybe seventeen, who looked as if he were trying to get away.
“You owe me money from last week!” the kid was yelling. “I was just taking them for a walk. We weren’t going nowhere.”
Under the dirt and sweat on his face, I recognized Billy, the boy I’d bumped into the day of the parade. Hired to help groom the horses, he’d decided to walk off with them instead.
“Boy, did you think no one would notice?” said Vladimir. “To try to steal one of the stallions, that’s unforgivable! You’re lucky I’m not my father. If you had tried to steal one of Lillya’s horses… Someone, just go get the sheriff. I’ve got to welcome the new lion tamer. Don’t let him go while I’m gone.”
The Fortune Teller's Fate Page 13
