by Mary Finn
The next day he told me we couldn’t go on like this for ever.
“I can’t forget the way I found you, Jonas, curled up and whimpering like a puppy. You could have fallen down the stairs and broken your neck.”
I think he’s making a plan but he hasn’t told me anything. I suppose that’s in case it doesn’t happen. And I don’t know if I want anything else anyway. It might be worse.
The Prof doesn’t have a wireless but he does have a wind-up gramophone. So, it wouldn’t matter if there was no electricity, you could still use it. I saw it in his bedroom, on the next floor down. It was on top of one of the bedside cabinets.
It’s really old-fashioned. It has a big horn, like an elephant’s ear or something. It looks exactly like the one in the dog record label. Everyone knows that label. The dog in the picture got an awful shock one day long ago when he heard his master’s voice coming out of the machine. He cocked his ear to listen, and that made him famous.
The Prof doesn’t really seem to bother much about music any more unless I ask him to play. I don’t know why that is. If I could play as well as he does I would get up on the stage and play and make people happy.
I must remember to ask the Prof what the date is because I don’t like not knowing it. After all, guess who’s going to be ten on 15 October 1942?
NOTEBOOK
2
6 MARCH: DOUBLE DATE!
The day I met the Corrados, Papa didn’t say much when I got back to where he was standing with his bike, looking cross. Not even when I told him that we’d just been given a personal invitation to the circus. Papa just said we’d better push on with the job we had or there’d be an iceberg in the grate instead of a fire.
We didn’t find too many good sticks that day. I climbed up pretty high in some of the trees at Vincennes, and broke off branches and twigs for Papa to pick up. But every bit of wood near the bottom of the trees was already gone. Cleared out. You’d think a brontosaurus had just gone by that morning, munching his way through it all.
I saw some magpie nests up higher, which would have been really great to burn. It wouldn’t have been mean because there wouldn’t be any eggs in them yet and the magpies could sleep on top of buildings instead. But when Papa saw me looking at them he shouted at me to come down.
When we arrived back home and I told Mama about the circus she got really excited.
“Aren’t you my great fellow, Jonas!” she said to me. “I always love a circus. That is so exciting!”
But Papa said she shouldn’t get wound up about a bit of tinsel tat.
“Anyway, we’re forbidden to go to a film or a play,” he said. “Do you think a circus is any different?”
“But they said they wanted us, Papa,” I said. “The man said he would give us the best seats.”
If we didn’t go – well, I didn’t know what I’d do.
Mama just made a face right back at him. “So what if you and I have to stand by the side of the road?” she said. “At least let the children have a treat. We’re all sick and tired of living here like mice in a wall.”
Nadia was so thrilled she said nothing at all. That’s what she’s like. She goes into herself like Papa, but only about good things. He does it about bad things. Mama and I are a bit like each other. When we get excited we talk all the time and we never think something just isn’t going to turn out well in the end.
The really good thing was that the day we were invited was Nadia’s birthday. That was 6 March. She was eight years of age on the Sunday we went to the circus. And if we hadn’t gone, the truth is there wasn’t really going to be anything very much for her, except for what Mama had made for her during the week. Which was a new actor for her theatre.
She made his body out of some nice smooth cardboard she found on a window ledge on the landing and she made his costume out of an old tie of Papa’s that she couldn’t get the stains out of. She drew a face on him and stuck a little clipping of her own hair to make his. Then she stuck another bit onto his face to give him a beard. Actually he looked quite good.
Nadia said later that we had to call him d’Artagnan, but I don’t think d’Artagnan had a beard. She said he was in disguise to fight against the Cardinal, who was just like Hitler.
Mama said the Cardinal wasn’t that bad. Papa just stayed worried the whole day long.
WE SET OUT
I’d forgotten to ask what time the circus began, so, to be sure not to be late, we set out just after all the churches closed their doors, when the Masses were finished.
Mama did her best and stuck some pieces of bread together with tomato paste to bring along in her bag. “It’s getting to be spring,” she said. “We can eat outside and then we won’t look stupid if we’re too early after all.”
Papa was wrong to be so gloomy because it was a lovely day, not even one bit cold. We walked the same way as before. We didn’t go the river way, which is nicer, because there were just too many stinky German trucks speeding along. They’re the only ones who are allowed to drive on Sundays. That’s another of their stupid laws.
This time most of the vans at the fair had their doors open. Everything looked busy. We could hear a hurdy-gurdy playing as we crossed the street and got near. There were jugglers, and stalls selling paper hats and strings of paper flowers.
“They’re for men to give to their lady-loves,” said Nadia. “Especially if it’s their birthday.”
Papa bought a pink flower for her and a white one for Mama.
There was a man walking around with a tray full of wind-up toys but they looked a bit old. There were people dressed as clowns, with white faces and hair made of mops, but they were children, really, I think, or else they may have been dwarves. There was a really great smell of burnt sausages, the kind I like best, but we couldn’t see any for sale.
Nadia grabbed my arm and said, “Is that them?” And guess what, she was right.
The Corrados’ van was the only yellow one. All the others were dark green or black or just plain rusty. They had made a special area in front of their van by putting sandbags in a big semi-circle. It looked like a garden, or the outside of a restaurant.
The sandbags looked like army sandbags but I don’t suppose Signor Corrado had stolen them from the Germans because that would be just plain stupid. Maybe he took them from Notre-Dame Cathedral, which has lots of them outside. Anyway, the bags all had letters painted on and they spelled out the words MAGIC GARDEN. There was a flag stuck to the door of the caravan that said CORRADO FAMILY CIRCUS – NO. 1 IN EUROPE.
Once you stepped over the sandbags there were five rows of wooden seats. Four of the seats in the front row had paper signs that said RESERVED. I couldn’t believe they were for us but they were, because Signor Corrado stepped out of the van right that minute and when he saw me he clapped his hands and called us all over. He bowed and pointed towards the seats. He made a special fuss over Mama and kissed her hand.
Papa looked embarrassed. “We’ll stand over there,” he said. He pointed towards the row of trees. “But the children can sit, thank you.”
Signor Corrado wiggled his eyebrows like a clown but Papa shook his head. “It would be best for everybody if we did that,” he said. “But thank you, again.”
Mama looked a bit sad about the seats but then she kissed us and pushed us forward. “Enjoy the show!” she said. “We’ll just walk about. Forget about us, we’ll be fine.”
Then I saw La Giaconda standing in the doorway of the caravan. She was wearing a black dress made of net and her long curly hair was loose over her shoulders. She gave me a big wave.
“Welcome, Jonas!” she called. “You’re in for a treat today.”
I made Nadia sit down in the front row and then I went over to La Giaconda to tell her it was my sister’s birthday. Well, why not?
THE SHOW
The seats filled up pretty quickly but Nadia and I definitely had the best ones. She was breathing fast, as if she’d been running, she was so excited.
I kept looking round to make sure there were no soldiers hanging around. They can go to anything they want to in Paris. Which isn’t fair because they have special free cinemas of their own, and eating places just for them where they can get all kinds of food. Even steaks. But there weren’t any soldiers there.
There were a couple of policemen patrolling the street behind the vans, but they didn’t come over. They’d probably seen the show a few times.
Signor Corrado set up a wire between two poles. Then he began to fit a lot of stripy poles together, one into another, so it made a really long pole. It looked even longer than the ones knights used to joust with from their horses.
When the pole was ready La Giaconda came out of the van holding a little accordion. She played a really sad song, just a few bars. Signor Corrado looked as if he was crying but that was because he had tears painted under his eyes. He was wearing the same Pierrot costume as he had on the day I saw him first.
Then she began a fast funny tune, and before we could even see him do it Signor Corrado had bounced up onto the wire and was walking on it, holding the long pole. It reached nearly as far as our seats.
First he walked, and then he ran because the music was getting faster and faster. In the end he was really sliding across, as if the wire was the skinniest piece of ice ever. Then he did the splits on it. Ouch!
We all clapped when he jumped down and rolled over in a somersault.
He bowed and said, “Welcome,” to everybody.
“One day, my good friends, my family will have our Big Top again and when you come you’ll see me and all the other artists working with a proper trapeze and a proper high wire, just like in the old days.” He pretended to wipe away his tears.
Then La Giaconda sat down in a velvet armchair. She said that she was La Giaconda, the muse of the great artist Leonardo da Vinci. Signor Corrado signalled for all of us to clap.
“I have special powers given to me by direct line from none other than the lovely Mona Lisa herself,” she said. “La Giaconda. Another Italian guest living in your beautiful city.”
“Not any more, she’s not!” someone shouted. “She’s run away, like you!”
La Giaconda got pink in her cheeks.
“Good French people are keeping her safe,” she said. “Thank you.”
Some people at the back began to laugh so I turned round and glared but they probably didn’t see me. Anyway, they stopped when La Giaconda said she could read people’s minds. She wagged her finger like a teacher.
“So all of you should be very careful what you’re thinking!”
And then, before I could see it coming, she pointed at Nadia and called her over. She patted her lap as if that was where Nadia should sit.
She said, “I’m going to test my powers on this lovely young girl. I swear to you I have never set eyes on her before this day.”
That was true, I knew, but still, I’d just told her about Nadia’s birthday. I really, really didn’t want La Giaconda to make my sister look silly in any way. Don’t forget, Nadia is deaf. And she can be shy with new people.
But guess what, Nadia didn’t mind! She just sprang out of her seat. I looked round to see if Mama and Papa were watching. I couldn’t see them but it was too late to do anything about it. There was my sister, right up there, sitting on La Giaconda’s lap.
La Giaconda put her hands on Nadia’s head.
“This is a very talented young lady,” she said. “Artistic too. I’ll bet she runs a theatrical establishment of her very own. Isn’t that right?”
I nearly whooped out loud. How could La Giaconda know about Nadia’s theatre? I hadn’t said anything about that.
But there was a problem. Nadia wasn’t facing La Giaconda, so she wasn’t able to read her lips. She probably didn’t even know there’d been a question. And she wasn’t looking at me, making mad signs at her to look behind.
Then something amazing happened. Nadia turned round and said to La Giaconda, “Will you say that again, please? I didn’t catch what you said.”
My sister was so smart! She’d said just the right thing, so La Giaconda asked her question about the theatre again.
Nadia blushed red. “Yes, I’ve got a puppet theatre, with kings and queens and a Puss in Boots.”
She forgot to say d’Artagnan.
Then La Giaconda said, “But you don’t have this one.”
She opened her hand. Everybody except those in the front row had to stretch their necks to see what she had in it. We could see it really well. It was a tiny wooden puppet, a marionette with yellow strings, wearing a beautiful Pierrot costume. It looked exactly like Signor Corrado.
La Giaconda made it walk in the air and do the splits just like him.
“This is for you, Nadia,” she said. She looked at the audience, row by row. “My muse, the famous lady in the painting, has just let me know that today is your birthday and you are eight years of age.”
That was another weird thing. I hadn’t told La Giaconda Nadia’s age so I don’t know how she got that right, as Nadia is so small. But she did.
One girl behind us started to cry, I suppose she was jealous about the puppet, but everybody else clapped and cheered. Then Signor Corrado made everybody sing “Happy Birthday” and he bowed Nadia back into her seat, clapping away himself. Her face was bright pink but really happy, you could see that, and she had the puppet held tight in her hands.
I was a bit jealous too, but I knew that puppet was the best present Nadia would ever get in her whole entire life.
THE REST OF THE SHOW
“Now put your hands together for Madame Fifi and her canny canines!”
Signor Corrado started the clapping again.
Madame Fifi came out of the yellow van. She bowed. She had a set of red buckets held up against her chest and a big silver hoop looped around her neck. She was small and fat but you should have heard the whistle she made. Even Georges Leclercq couldn’t do better, and he was the best whistler in our school.
The old woman sitting beside me started to shake when the poodles came out after the whistle and began to do their tricks. She was trying not to laugh but that was impossible because the dogs kept falling off the buckets. Or else they pushed them over and stuck their heads inside. One wore his bucket like a hat and he kept bumping into the others because he couldn’t see. Only one of the dogs made it through the hoop properly. The others just stuck their heads through it and shook themselves and turned away as if they were saying, “Thanks but no thanks.” Everyone was laughing at them. I looked towards the trees again and this time I saw Papa. He was laughing too!
Afterwards I found out that Madame Fifi’s dogs were really clown dogs. They were supposed to make us laugh, not do everything right. But one thing they were all really good at was walking on their hind legs. That reminded me of Jean-Paul’s dog, Whistle, and I wondered where he was. Somewhere in France, I suppose. Unless the Germans carried him off back to Germany to give to Hitler as a spoil of war.
Then Signor Corrado came back. He said he had a special treat but people would have to make a proper queue like a shop queue and come up close, one at a time, to see it.
“Because, ladies and gentlemen, this is a very tiny piece of genuine magic.”
Everyone groaned but they weren’t cross, not really, you could tell. Signor Corrado pointed at me.
“I’ll need my young friend from the front row. He can act as my adjutant.”
I didn’t know what that meant but later I found out Signor Corrado liked to use strange words when he was performing. Adjutant means a kind of helper.
Anyway, that is how I got to see the best part of the show really close up, and for all the time it lasted, not like everybody else who had only a minute or so to look.
THE VERY, VERY SMALL CIRCUS OF LUIGI CORRADO
Signor Corrado went back into the van and brought out a tiny theatre. It wasn’t like Nadia’s, it was more like the puppet theatre in the Luxembourg Gardens, bec
ause it had legs. Only it was much smaller and not as brightly painted. The top came up as high as his chest.
Then he brought out a yellow suitcase with labels stuck all over it. They said MOSCOW and VIENNA and COPENHAGEN and ROME and some other places.
He gave the suitcase to me and said really loudly, “On no account open those clasps, young man. I’m not responsible for what happens if you do.”
I had no idea what was in the case but it was very, very light. I thought it might be full of small balloons that would float off. Or flat ones I’d have to blow up. Or else maybe stink bombs that might explode when they felt the air.
But it wasn’t any of those.
When he had the theatre set up right with its little platform sticking out in front, Signor Corrado told me to put the suitcase down on the platform, facing out to the audience.
“Do not go near the clasps!” he said. “Only I, Luigi Corrado, can deal with the menace that lurks inside this case.”
I could hear people whispering down in the rows of chairs. Someone shouted that he was itchy already, but everyone else shushed him.
Then La Giaconda appeared from behind the caravan with a long wooden flute and began to play the strangest tune you ever heard. It was as if she was calling something out of a magic forest. I’d never heard a sound like it before. As she played, the lid of the suitcase began to rise, even though Signor Corrado was standing well away and had his hands down by his sides.
I could see everything because I was so close.
The lid went up. It was lined with golden shiny material and so was the bottom part, which was raised level with the rim of the suitcase. There were four tiny Roman chariots lined up at one end. A wall divided the middle of the ring but there was space at both ends. The wall had ancient Romans painted onto it, some in togas, some with helmets. I think it was meant to be the Colosseum.
