She smiled as she looked at Nick. She had spent enough time in Germany that she was entirely aware of how aristocratic he was, and how little he belonged here. And she was touched by how courteous he was to her. She had seen him work with his horses and knew just how good he was. Several of the performers had been talking about him and his exquisite Lipizzaners since he arrived.
“I don’t need to ask you what circus you came from,” she said, smiling shyly at him. She had heard through the grapevine that he was a count, and it didn’t surprise her. “Why did you come to the circus?”
“Political problems at home,” he said simply, and she didn’t ask him for further information. She already knew from Lucas that Nick’s wife had died, and Toby’s younger sister, who would have been nine by then. Gallina felt sorry for them. This was a strange place for them to land, and she wondered how long they’d stay. She wondered if he’d lost his money, and all he knew how to do was train horses and ride, which was painfully close to the truth. But she knew for a certainty that he was many, many social strata above them, but he never let her feel it, he was courteous and gentlemanly, and always kind to her girls.
“I came over to ask you if you’d like to join us for Thanksgiving,” she said warmly. “It’s an important family holiday here. We make turkey, and dumplings of course, and traditional Czech dishes. It’s our version of Thanksgiving.” She laughed. “We’re hoping that you and the boys will come.”
“I’d like that very much,” he said graciously. “May I bring something? I’m not much of a cook, but I could bring dessert.” He knew he could go to a bakery in town and buy some pies. He had been told that pumpkin and apple pies were traditional for Thanksgiving.
“No, my sisters-in-law do most of the cooking. I’m not much of a cook either. But it’s your first Thanksgiving here, and we didn’t want you to be alone. Besides, my Katja is crazy about your Toby.” He had noticed it—it would have been impossible not to. And Toby was rapidly becoming equally crazy about her. They were smitten. “He’s a good boy,” she added, and Nick was touched. “And Lucas is a little monster, and we love him.” They both laughed at that. Lucas had friends now all over the fairgrounds, and Nick wouldn’t have been surprised if he had met each of the thirteen hundred performers at least once. He seemed to have friends everywhere they went, and he knew everything about them, what they did, and where they came from. And his English was improving by leaps and bounds. “He wants my brothers-in-law to teach him how to juggle.”
“That should be interesting.” Nick laughed at the idea. “Preferably on stilts, I imagine. He’s been working on that diligently since we got here.” As he said it, Lucas came down the road on his short stilts with Pierre, who was showing him how to keep his balance. Rosie was walking along beside him, looking as adorable as always and holding one of his hands while Pierre held the other. And Toby and Katja were following behind on a tandem bicycle they had borrowed from someone. “Speak of the devils,” Nick said, as the ragtag group approached the trailer, and saw their parents talking.
“Are we in trouble?” Lucas inquired with an unconcerned glance at his father. If so, it wouldn’t have been unfamiliar to him. Nick had scolded him several times for disappearing. Nick wanted to know where he was at all times, just as Gallina did with her girls. They both had fairly stern European values and rules for their children. Others were more haphazard and less vigilant with their kids.
“No, you’re not in trouble for a change,” Nick reassured Lucas. “Rosie and Katja’s mother was kind enough to invite us for Thanksgiving.” As he said it, all four children gave a cheer. “I think that’s a vote of approval,” he said, smiling at Gallina.
“Well, see you tomorrow then,” she said, rounding up her girls to take them home for dinner. “Come at four o’clock. We’ll have dinner at six.” Nick thanked her again, and after she left, he went to a nearby liquor store and bought two bottles of decent wine. He didn’t want to show up the next day empty-handed. He was grateful for the invitation, and talked to the boys about their new friends that night, as they ate dinner at the trailer’s tiny dining table that was barely big enough for two men and a boy. Most of the time they were bumping into each other in the narrow, confined space.
“Gallina and her husband fight a lot,” Toby filled him in, over the chicken Nick had cooked in the tiny oven. Nick was learning to cook as well as everything else. For the first time in his life, he was doing their laundry and making his own bed, and he had borrowed a vacuum cleaner from one of their neighbors to clean the trailer. “Sergei doesn’t like her doing the high wire. He wants her to do the trapeze with him and Rosie’s uncles, and she doesn’t want to. She thinks it’s too tame, even when they do a triple, which is really hard. But they use a net. I watched them do it,” Toby said, as though it were commonplace to know people who could do that. A month before, he wouldn’t even have known what a “triple” was. Now he was explaining it to his father. “It’s a triple somersault in the air on a trapeze. He told her to go live with the Markoviches, if she wants to be crazy. They don’t use a net.”
“So I’ve been told,” Nick said quietly. Some of the gossip was familiar to him now, and he knew the names of the star performers of the big acts. He had recently talked to the trainer of the big cats, who was an interesting person, had lived in Africa for many years, and was also German. It was an extraordinarily varied group of people, from all social classes and educational backgrounds. Some had had considerable schooling. He had talked to a man from another horse act and was intrigued to discover that he’d gone to law school but preferred the circus. Others looked as though they had come from some very dark places to join the circus. There was a huge sampling of humanity, with all kinds of people, even though they seemed strange to him at first. But the newness of it was starting to wear off. And the invitation to Thanksgiving dinner with Gallina and her family had touched him. He was intrigued to meet her husband and his brothers. He missed male companionship without Alex and his father.
Gallina and Sergei and his brothers and their wives turned out to be very friendly, kind people, when Nick and the boys went there for dinner. They had seven or eight children between them, mostly boys, all of whom were expected to eventually join the trapeze troupe, and some of whom already had, in their teens. And Nick liked Sergei a great deal. He had a good sense of humor, and immediately stashed one of the bottles of wine Nick brought, and said it would be wasted on his brothers. They drank the other one, along with several other bottles, at dinner. But they were a wholesome crowd, who loved their families and had fun with their wives, and Nick and his children had a terrific time at their first Thanksgiving dinner.
Toby and Katja went outside immediately afterward, and sat in the warm night air, talking about the things that mattered to them. Katja confessed to Toby that she wanted to leave the circus one day and have a normal life and a home and not live in a trailer, which seemed reasonable to him. She said her parents would be very upset if she said it to them. They thought this was the best life in the world, and Katja didn’t. She wanted more.
“What about you?” she asked Toby with her big blue eyes, and he thought about it for a minute before he answered.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what I want to do, except go back to Germany one day.” Just saying it made him miss his grandfather again, and Marianne and all his friends.
“I want to stay here,” Katja added, “in America, not Florida. I liked New York when we went there. It’s always great at Madison Square Garden when we start the season.” Her eyes lit up as she said it. “I don’t want to go back to Prague, it was boring. I think my mother misses it, but I don’t. It’s better here.” Toby didn’t know if that was true yet. He hadn’t been there long enough to decide. All he did know was that he liked her a lot, and after they talked for a while, he kissed her. He didn’t tell her, but she was the first girl he had ever kissed, and his head was swimming when they stopped. And so was hers. He kissed her again then, a
nd they were better at it. It seemed to be something one had to learn. And they were both more than willing to apply themselves to it. They were still working on it when Lucas came around the trailer, saw them kissing, and stopped dead in his tracks, and then giggled and disappeared. He went to tell Rosie what he’d seen.
“How stupid,” Rosie said with a disgusted look. “My father will be mad if he finds out. Katja’s not allowed to kiss boys. He doesn’t want her acting like ‘some little tart in the circus,’ whatever that means. He tells her that all the time.”
“I think they like each other a lot,” Lucas confided, and Rosie agreed. “I don’t think we should tell.” She made him pinkie-swear not to then, which she said was something she had learned at school. They went to school in Florida in the winter, but the rest of the time, on tour, they were tutored, which she liked better. The teachers at the circus didn’t give as much homework, but sometimes her mother did instead. She wanted her to get a good education, which Rosie thought was boring.
When Nick and the boys went home that night, everyone looked sated and happy. Nick had had several glasses of wine, and had relaxed for the first time in a long time. He had played chess with Sergei and won, and enjoyed talking to his brothers. They had all spoken German to him and his boys, and Czech among themselves, and the children had spoken English to each other. It had been a wonderful family evening, and Nick had been touched to be included. He felt as though he had friends there now, and Sergei wanted to come and watch Nick work with his horses. He wanted to see Pegasus do his croupade, which several people had told him was amazing and hard to believe, and made Pegasus look like he was flying. People were beginning to know him by name now, by his new name, not the old one.
“They’re good people,” Nick said to Toby and Lucas as they walked into the trailer, which didn’t look quite as bleak now, knowing they had friends nearby. Toby had stars in his eyes and only nodded, and Lucas giggled as they went to get ready for bed. He didn’t tell Toby he’d seen him kissing Katja. Toby was totally besotted as he brushed his teeth, put on his pajamas, and went to bed. He was in love. And Lucas wandered into his father’s room to kiss him goodnight. Nick was on his bed writing a letter to his father to tell him about his first Thanksgiving. It was so different from anything Paul knew. An evening with six men who performed a trapeze act, and their wives who were gymnasts, and Gallina on the high wire. It was hard to find the words to describe everything, but it had been a perfect evening in his brand-new life.
“Goodnight, Papa,” Lucas said, brushing his cheek with a kiss. “Maybe I’ll be a trapeze artist one day, instead of a clown,” he mumbled with a yawn and shuffled off to bed, as though those were his only two options, as his father mused about how strange life was, how rapidly things changed, and wondered what would happen to them all. If only he knew. But for now, this was enough. It was a safe refuge from the storm brewing in Europe.
Chapter 10
The circus did a Christmas show every year in Sarasota, for the locals, and to try out some of their new acts. They wanted Nick in the show, and advertised it heavily: the Count, with the flying horses Pegasus and Athena. They had a photographer take some impressive photographs of Pegasus in midair during a croupade, and Nick cut a dashing figure in top hat and tails astride him. And when he did his act in the show, the audience went wild and loved him. He was in the parade at the end, riding Pegasus, and Toby on Athena, waving their top hats at the crowd. He was a new face, and both women and men seemed to be excited by him. The women liked his striking good looks, he was a very handsome man, and the men admired what he did with his horses. The introduction of his act was a resounding success, much to the delight of John Ringling North, who had come to watch him from a seat in the front row, and even he thought Nick’s act was perfection. And several of the other performers had come, too, and all congratulated Nick when he went backstage after his performance.
Nick was hanging around afterward, waiting for the parade, when he heard the ringmaster announce the Markovich family in the main ring as the last act after the intermission, and Nick wandered out, to stand at the edge of the ring to watch Christianna. He had seen her practice on the low wire a few times, with her father coaching her, but he had never seen her perform on the high wire. He was curious, and stood silently as she shimmied gracefully up the rope to the tiny platform near the top of the tent, as the crowd watched without uttering a sound. The band was playing the music from Swan Lake, which Nick recognized instantly, but he paid no attention to it, as he watched her move with infinite grace from the platform onto the wire.
And instinctively he lowered his eyes to see what was below her. There were handlers, and her father in his wheelchair, and her brothers watching her closely, standing below the high wire, in case they had to catch her. But there was no net, and as he saw it, Nick held his breath and kept his eyes glued to her. He was mesmerized by the tiny waiflike figure who seemed to glide through the air, standing on nothing. She was up so high that it was hard to see the wire beneath her feet. She looked as though she were suspended in midair, dancing, and she smiled as she did it, as though she loved what she was doing.
The wire bounced once, and the entire crowd gasped, but she maintained her footing effortlessly. She turned backward then, and forward again, and as he looked, Nick started to feel sick. He couldn’t bear the suspense and the tension as he stared at her while she took such terrifying risks. It was easy to see why she was the star of the show. She deserved every bit of it for what she was doing. Her performance seemed interminable as the tension mounted, and Nick felt chilled as he continued to watch her.
And then finally, with a last graceful leap, she landed on the platform on the other side, barely bigger than her tiny feet, and the audience burst into thunderous applause. She grasped a loop in the rope and slid effortlessly down until she landed on the circus floor and took an elegant bow. The crowd got to their feet immediately and cheered her. She had risked her life for them, and they considered it entertainment, and as he stood there afterward, Nick realized he was shaking. He had never seen anything so terrifying in his life.
She whisked past him as she left the ring, but didn’t see him, and her brothers followed like a palace guard, with her father wheeling his chair behind them. He had once been as good as his daughter and notoriously more daring, and her mother had been as graceful, everyone agreed, until she fell to her death. Nick couldn’t imagine anything being worth taking that kind of risk. He had watched Gallina perform earlier, and she had been far more cautious. Her act was exciting, but nothing like this. Christianna’s performance was a combination of exquisite grace and agility, remarkable balance, and sheer terror. And she was much too young and beautiful to die. Her mother had been scarcely older when she lost her life, when Christianna was very young. She had been brought up by her father and aunt, Nick had been told.
He was still shaken when he mounted Pegasus a few minutes later for the parade. Christianna had been the grand finale, and deservedly so. And then the parade lightened the mood again, with every performer in it, all the animals, the stars of the show riding elephants, and Christianna among them, while the clowns cavorted around them, and the music celebrated the close of the show. There had been no mishaps, but Nick had felt as though his heart would stop as he watched Christianna. Pegasus pranced past her at one point in the parade, as she rode the largest elephant, standing on his back, and she looked at Nick. Their eyes met, and he saluted her with his top hat, and then she smiled. She looked as light as air as she danced along beside him for a moment, and then he led Pegasus into a slow canter and moved ahead. Nick realized there was something riveting about her every time he saw her. He didn’t know if it was the shocking risks she took with her own life, or her sheer beauty. But either way, he felt haunted for hours afterward whenever they met. And he couldn’t imagine why her father let her do it, particularly given what had happened to him, and her mother. Clearly, as Gallina said, they were mad.
; At the end of the show, he and Toby took the horses back to their tent, and brushed and fed them, and then he walked slowly back to the trailer with his son. He felt dizzy and almost drunk from the sounds and smells of the circus that day. He could still hear the music in his head.
“I watched Christianna Markovich tonight,” Nick said casually to Toby as they wandered home. Their own performance had been exhilarating that night. Pegasus had been the hit of the show, and Nick along with him. “That’s an insane thing to do,” Nick said, still feeling queasy when he thought of what he’d seen Christianna doing. At any moment, she could have plummeted to her death, with the smallest slip. Gallina’s high-wire act was entertaining. Christianna’s was death-defying magic. There was a huge difference, and Nick had been aware of it instantly.
“Everyone says they’re crazy,” Toby said nonchalantly.
“Her father certainly is, to let her do it. I would kill you if you ever wanted to do something that dangerous.” Nick still couldn’t understand it. Nothing justified the risk.
“It’s what they do,” Toby said with a grin. In six weeks, the circus and everything that went with it had begun to seem normal to him. And now that he was infatuated with Katja, he was having fun there. Their romance was blazing. Both families were aware of it, and thought it was sweet, as long as it didn’t get out of hand. And Gallina watched Katja carefully and had strict rules. Nick had warned his son not to go too far—she was a nice girl. Toby had promised to be reasonable. It was innocent and sweet, and their parents wanted it to stay that way.
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