The Ringmaster's Daughter: A beautiful and heartbreaking World War 2 love story

by Carly Schabowski

  That evening, Frieda appeared and woke him as her quick fingers took the poultice away. She wiped his face with a cloth, then held a glass of water to his lips.

  ‘You are looking better.’ She sat beside him and stroked some hair from his face.

  ‘I feel a little better now.’ He smiled at her.

  ‘You have a letter,’ she said, and placed an envelope on his chest. ‘It came the morning we left Lucien’s.’

  Michel sat up slowly, then saw the familiar writing of Bertrand. He opened the letter and tried to read, but the words jumbled and ran into one another.

  ‘Can I read it for you?’ she asked.

  ‘Please.’

  Dearest Michel,

  Once more your letter has cheered me completely. There is no news here apart from bad. The Germans seem able to defeat anyone in their path. I heard in Odette’s that Jewish refugees are sent to camps in the south – have you seen such a thing on your travels?

  It all seems so hopeless, but when I saw your letter my heart leapt with a little joy.

  Alas, you tell me of your own experiences, and have explained why the woman you cherish so much cannot be yours. It makes sense to me now. I am sorry, Michel. But take solace that you have known how it feels to fall in love.

  Your letter was short; you talked of cold, of weather. I can tell from your tone how bleak things have become. You wouldn’t ever let me know how bad it is, so I can only guess.

  I enclose in this letter a few francs – not much. I hope it finds you. There are many letters that go missing now, and this may well disappear into the void, especially with money inside. But it is worth the risk to know I have tried to help you as much as I can.

  I did sell my father’s watch – it bought me a little to get me by. I worry that this winter will be cold – too cold for these old bones – and with the higher cost of food now, I do fear that my savings will not last me long at all.

  Pah! Listen to me, an old man indeed – talking of money and heating and the cost of food. When did I become an old man, Michel? It seems to me that it was just a year ago that Amélie and I met – I was young and full of love, full of hope for my life. I wonder what joy will be left in my life now. I look in the mirror and see my grey head, my wrinkled face, and sometimes I ask my reflection, ‘Who are you?’ An imposter in my mirror!

  Please write to me again, Michel. Do not fear telling me things – tell me everything. I wait in earnest for your next letter.

  Be safe, my friend.

  Yours,

  Bertrand

  Frieda stopped talking and Michel took her hand in his.

  ‘I would love to meet him one day,’ she said.

  ‘And I hope you will.’

  ‘You must write to him when you feel better.’

  ‘I will. Frieda, the letter talks of you and Werner. I shouldn’t have said anything to Bertrand… it’s just, I thought you were his. Werner’s.’

  ‘Hush. No need to explain. Werner filled me in. I must admit I found the confusion a little funny.’

  ‘And what did you think of what I told Bertrand?’

  ‘Cherish. I love that word.’ She kissed him lightly on the cheek, then helped him to lie back down. ‘I am glad you cherish me, Michel. Know that I cherish you.’

  On the fourth day, Michel woke to the sound of bells tolling the hour. He sat up and found he was alone. He dressed and opened the door. He was in a field behind a graveyard, the horses grazing nearby. The church bell stopped – four o’clock.

  He sat on the caravan’s wooden steps and lit a cigarette. He heard an accordion play a familiar tune in the distance and knew they were performing – small tricks, dances, anything to earn money before they moved on once more towards Werner’s friend and the safety that he promised. It was strange to think of the Big Top lying crumpled in a box. Although tattered and aged, it was still the jewel that attracted people to the circus.

  In the distance, Michel saw the sky darkening to its autumnal deep navy. Within weeks, it would change to the pitchest of blacks with only the stars to light the night.

  He thought of Paris, and how the lights burned brightly so that the winter sky was never quite completely dark like here in the countryside. Was it still like that?

  He shivered and retreated inside. He lit a small fire in the stove and made coffee. Wrapping his coat around his shoulders, he sat next to the fire and dozed, awaiting his friends, his family, his love – Frieda – to return.

  ‘Michel!’ her voice sounded faraway, worried. He tried to reach out to her.

  ‘Michel!’ His dream dissolved and she was in front of him, tears streaming down her face, her cheeks flushed, her breathing rapid. ‘Quick, please come! Please!’

  Michel followed her out into the night, weaving through the gravestones. His head pounded and he felt dizzy, but he did not stop.

  As they rounded the corner of the church, Serge appeared, covered in blood, supporting Werner, who was battered and beaten.

  Michel helped Serge to carry Werner to his caravan. No one spoke. Only the grunting and breathing of Serge and Michel could be heard, punctuated with a gurgle of blood from Werner’s nose as he tried to breathe.

  Inside the caravan, Michel could see the state of Werner; his nose was broken and bent to the side, both eyes were swollen shut, and, as Serge undressed him, they glimpsed a deep gash in his side that oozed crimson.

  ‘Frieda, get Madame Rosie now! Go!’ Michel ordered. ‘Serge, fetch Giordano or Hugo and ask them for the génépy. Ask Jean to bring a needle and some thread. Quickly.’

  Michel was no doctor, but he treated Werner as he had once treated a tearaway stallion in Paris that had caught himself on a barbed fence. Michel had calmed him as he cried in pain and tended to the wounds with swift hands.

  ‘Michel…’ Werner tried to speak, his voice muffled by his swollen lip.

  ‘Hush now. Hush. It will be fine.’

  Madame Rosie brought with her a potent liquid, a deep green that reminded Michel of the stagnant water of the Seine in the summer months. She poured it down Werner’s throat, and within seconds his breathing calmed.

  ‘It won’t last long. You must be quick,’ she said. ‘I will help. You close the wound; I will sort his nose.’

  Michel held the wound closed as best he could, and Rosie, with a quick movement, snapped Werner’s nose back into place. She then cleaned his mouth, his lip and his nostrils, so that he could breathe easier.

  Michel saw he was missing two teeth as Rosie plugged the bloody holes with cotton wool.

  ‘What happened?’ Giordano burst in, the génépy in his hand, Jean behind, carrying the thick sewing needle he used to mend his costumes.

  Michel grabbed the alcohol and poured it over the wound, then sewed it shut, the stitches pronounced and haphazard.

  When he’d finished, Madame Rosie asked everyone to leave so she could clean and dress the ringmaster. ‘I’ll watch him for a while,’ she said. ‘Go and get some rest. If he wakes, I can give him some more of my remedy.’

  No one argued. As if they all knew where to go, they followed Frieda and poured into Jean’s caravan, Serge still wearing his shirt splattered with red.

  ‘I should change,’ he said to nobody in particular, as Frieda handed round tumblers of whisky.

  ‘What happened?’ Michel asked.

  ‘He would not stop. He wanted to drink after we had performed in the town square. Just me and him. We drank. No, wait – Odélie was there too. She was talking to some soldiers who were drinking and laughing. I told Werner that we should leave, but he insisted we stay. The others were at the restaurant, having a small meal provided by the chef for free – he liked Frieda, I think. I don’t know…’ Serge stopped, and Michel saw tears in his eyes.

  ‘I told him – I said, “You are drunk, we should go to the others, have something to eat,” but he did not want to listen. Finally I convinced him and we stood outside, getting some air, and then there he was – this solider from
the bar. He asked us for papers and Werner said he had forgotten them. The soldier, he wanted money, he wouldn’t leave us alone. We started to walk away, and then suddenly Werner was on the ground, blood coming from his side. Then I fought the man, I punched him, but he was strong and I fell and he hit Werner, he hit him and hit him and I tried to stop him, I tried to stop…’

  Serge held his head in his hands, his large shoulders suddenly smaller as they heaved up and down with each sob.

  ‘Clean yourself up, Serge.’ Frieda placed her hand on his shoulder. ‘We need to leave, now. Jean, Giordano, get the triplets to help you pack up. Michel, ride with Serge and take our caravan. I will stay with Werner.’

  Michel watched her as she continued giving instructions to the others. Her make-up was smeared from her tears, but her face was set as she took charge – she was the new ringmaster.

  Maybe it came from the incident, maybe it came from the quiet creak of wheels on the rutted road and the horses’ hooves clopping, or maybe it came from weariness, the knowledge that everything was now different and could not be undone. Whatever it was, Serge softened towards Michel that evening.

  ‘How is your head now?’ he asked as he navigated Claudette and Beau, who diligently pulled their master as he slept.

  ‘I feel dizzy sometimes. The air helps.’

  ‘You will be fine. I have been hit so many times on the head I am surprised it is still attached!’ He chuckled then stopped, as if realising the impropriety of it, and turned quickly to look at the caravan behind him as if Werner had heard.

  ‘Do you think this is a good idea? I feel foolish to have escaped south just to return north again.’

  ‘I don’t know. You can see, can’t you, that we are not safe anywhere? It does not matter where we stop – it can never be for long. We will always stand out – we did before the war, we do more so now, and it is certain that if we live, if the war ends, we will be at odds with the world once again.’

  ‘Where is this friend of Werner’s? Giordano said somewhere near Paris?’

  ‘Just outside the city. He’s an old friend, a good man. He has money and land.’

  ‘And we’ll be safe there?’

  ‘Safer than we have been.’

  A cold wind suddenly swept over them, and Michel shivered and wrapped his coat tighter around him.

  ‘Winter’s coming,’ Serge said.

  ‘I used to like winter. The fires my neighbour would build, the wine we drank, the books we read as the snow softly tapped on the windowpanes…’

  ‘I hate it.’

  Michel wanted to ask why, but instead lit a cigarette. He offered one to Serge, who accepted.

  ‘I have never seen you smoke anything apart from your pipe,’ Michel said.

  ‘I don’t often smoke cigarettes – they clog the throat more than the pipe, I find. I need my throat to be open and well. Swallowing a sword is not as easy as you think.’

  ‘I never thought it was.’

  ‘I saw my first sword swallower in Paris, you know?’

  ‘Yes, there are many circuses there.’

  ‘We are not a real circus though, Michel. We are a travelling group of misfits. Not like Cirque Medrano! Do you know it?’

  ‘At the edge of Montmartre? I know it.’

  ‘I wanted to work there, but I could not. I was not talented enough. Werner, he worked for Medrano a little in his youth. He wanted his own show to travel, though. He said everyone should have the chance to see his performers.’

  ‘You are from Paris then?’

  Serge shook his head. ‘Poland.’

  They lapsed into silence once more, until Serge broke it with a cough and flicked his cigarette to the ground, the sparks flying.

  ‘You should not smoke so much, Michel. My father smoked. Every day. I cannot remember ever seeing him without a cigarette in his mouth.’

  ‘He’s in Poland now?’

  ‘No. He is dead. What family I have left are in Paris. Do you think Werner will live?’

  Michel turned to Serge. ‘Yes, I do. He’s strong.’

  Serge nodded.

  ‘Where I come from is a small town in Poland, near the border,’ Serge began. ‘Have you ever been? I don’t suppose you have – not somewhere to visit just now, regardless. Should I tell you more?’

  Michel nodded and Serge continued, not pausing or really seeming to care whether Michel wanted to hear or not.

  ‘It once was Germany, but after the first war, Poland took it back. My father was Polish, my mother German. But it did not matter so much back then what country you were from. Serge isn’t what my parents called me; I was born with the first name Zygmunt. I was my father’s apprentice – an ironmonger. I was no one and I was happy with that. But early on, before this war began, things changed for us. Our town grew hostile – Germans against Poles, against Jews, against everyone. My father could see where things were heading so we moved to France, to my uncle’s home, and there, I grew up, from the age of twelve.

  ‘My father worked with my uncle, both ironmongers, and I was still their apprentice. In my uncle’s workshop hung two swords – swords he said were made by my great-grandfather for a battle. He had made hundreds of them, my uncle said, and these two he had kept for himself; to remember the war, those killed, and of course his skill.

  ‘The handles of the swords were gilded, and he had added gems, red and blue, that glinted every time the light caught them. I loved to look at them – just look. My uncle said I could not touch them.

  ‘I was perhaps fifteen years old when I went to see the circus with my family. When I say “circus”, it was little more than a bunch of travellers playing tricks and telling fortunes. There was one performer, though, who claimed to be the strongest man and who could swallow swords whole.

  ‘I wanted to watch him do this – I wanted to see a man who could defeat a mighty sword and walk away alive.

  ‘My uncle and father told me I was silly and childish. I was almost a man myself – I was to do away with children’s magic and illusion. Whilst they drank beer at a bar, I snuck away with my cousin, who you know.’

  ‘I do?’

  ‘Odélie – my cousin. She flirts a lot, makes people think we were, or are something, but it’s not like that. She just enjoys making men look at her, and back then she was the same. She wanted to see the performer too – not because he swallowed swords, but because he had winked at her earlier and she wanted to find out exactly what that wink meant.

  ‘We found the man in amongst a crowd three or four deep, and pushed to the front. Odélie stood ahead of me, smiling at the man who simply and expertly swallowed swords of different sizes, as if he were a frog who could stick out his tongue for an insect. It sounds disgusting – and it would horrify most – but to me it was so extraordinary that it had me riveted.

  ‘When he finished his act, Odélie made her way over to him and they spoke. I watched him afar. He placed his hand on her arm, and I knew they would soon depart together.

  ‘“Monsieur,” he said to me. “I wish to take you and your cousin for a nightcap. Will you join us?”

  ‘I looked at Odélie – her smile said it all, and I could not begrudge her what she wanted. I agreed.

  ‘He was a kind man who was flattered by my interest in his craft, and he taught me what he knew over the weeks and months that he and Odélie were together. It was a secret for her and me; my father would be angry that I was even thinking about joining the circus, and my uncle would disown Odélie if he suspected she was not a virgin.

  ‘When the man left to join another circus in the south, Odélie convinced me to try out at the Cirque Medrano. Like I told you, I was not good enough. I went to a local bar that evening to drown my sorrows. Odélie came too and tried to cheer me up, telling me stories of the things she had done as a child – you know, like stealing a tart meant for dinner, or how she would hide under the bed to scare her father. While I drunk an entire bottle of red until I could no longer think, Odélie
had chatted up a small man, a man who called himself Werner Neumann. “I have a circus,” he said. “A travelling circus. Your beautiful cousin tells me you are a talented sword swallower?”

  ‘I nodded. The wine had deadened my tongue.

  ‘“Tomorrow, come and see me,” he said. He gave me his Paris address on a scrap of paper.

  ‘I went. Of course I did. So did Odélie. I got a job. I argued with my father. I left. And Odélie followed. Although she had no talent as such, she learned how to ride, how to do acrobatic tricks. She learned how to get men to like her, to rely on her. And now, here we are.’

  An owl flew close and startled the horses, who stomped and chaffed at the bit. Michel soothed them until they walked on, their ears twitching for any new sound.

  ‘Do you think Werner will be OK?’ Serge asked once more.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I hope you are right. I am not sure what we would do without him.’

  ‘I don’t think we have to worry about that for now.’

  Serge nodded and flicked at the reins, spurring the horses on. ‘Can I have another cigarette?’

  ‘You can.’

  Eleven

  Le Cirque des Amis

  En route to their new home, in the region of Senlis outside Paris, the trees had shed their rust-coloured clothes, leaving naked limbs whose skeletons felt no cold; in fact, they welcomed it, allowing the early morning frost to cling to them.

  Michel, instead of shedding his own clothes, gained a few more. First was a patchwork-knitted jacket that Geneviève had left for him, then on top of that a long black woollen coat which Odélie said was left behind by some customers long ago, yet smelled strongly of cigarettes and a tangy aftershave Michel could have sworn he knew. He thought once or twice to ask her about the coat’s true origin, yet the bare branches of the trees swaying in the cold morning made him think again.

  ‘We are not far,’ Serge said. It was a Friday evening, and the sun had just begun its descent over the horizon.