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

by Carly Schabowski

  The speed at which our performers vanished was a sight. Jean, Giordano, Hugo and Kacper were smuggled into the cheese van the next day, and driven south to a woman – a former wife (?) – of Henri’s.

  Serge, Madame Rosie and I made for Paris in Henri’s car, leaving behind a small bunch of workers who were of no interest to the brigadeführer and his men.

  At first, it all looked as though it had gone to plan.

  It was only when we reached our street that we realised all was not well. The brigadeführer had sent two armed men who stood outside the door to the apartment block – right there on the street. Serge drove past them quickly, muttering under his breath – realising that Herr Wolff had known exactly who we all were.

  We had only one place left to go. We abandoned Henri’s car on the outskirts of Paris, and walked and hitched rides to your friend Lucien. I knew his address, and we hoped we had a chance to hide there.

  He welcomed us – of course he did – but we knew once we entered his farmhouse, we could not leave again, and Lucien knew the same.

  We stayed there for four years, Michel. Four long years Madame Rosie and I lived in Lucien’s cellar. We left, sometimes early in the morning, to walk a little around the farm, but never for long and we dared not venture into the town. I could write a book about it, Michel – about the air raids, the Germans who came to Lucien’s house for money, for food, and how each time we resigned ourselves that this was the end. But each time, we were given a stay of execution and stayed in that cellar – no longer a prison for us, but a fortress.

  Serge, as you can imagine, could not stay cooped up like that and left Lucien’s within a week. He was heading to England. Said he would swim if necessary.

  We did not hear from Serge for over a year, but one day a letter arrived, with a London postmark – Serge had made it.

  He was working in a pub in the East End, happily engaged to the landlord’s daughter. He said he was ready for a quiet life and I did not blame him.

  He told us of Werner – that he had lasted two more days at Henri’s until Wolff found him and took him away for hiding Jews. He had no evidence, and Henri thought he would have been able to help him – but before anyone could help or harm him, he died from infection. Serge believed it was his last revenge on the Boche, for what they had taken from him – dying before they could take pleasure in killing or torturing him.

  Henri left for Switzerland soon after Werner’s death, taking the triplets with him. The last postcard Serge had received from him showed a photograph of Henri and the triplets, all smiling in a field full of wildflowers. Serge thought the triplets looked the happiest he had ever seen them.

  Odélie left for Paris, and no one has heard from her since. But you know her, I’m sure she is fine, she always could take care of herself.

  As for Kacper, Hugo, Jean and Giordano. I can tell you that Hugo died – the drink took him in the end. Jean and Giordano – my friend, they left for the south and were taken on their way to Italy. As of now, no one knows where they are, but we fear the worst – we have heard of experiments in the camps on twins, little people and the like. Madame Rosie says we will see them again one day – she has not seen their death in the cards… and so, we hope.

  Kacper is still in the south. He wrote to Madame Rosie at my address and his letter was in amongst yours when we came home. He was going to try to get to Palestine to see his family – I will write to see if he has succeeded, whether there is any word of Jean and Giordano.

  Madame Rosie is in the kitchen as I write to you now, cleaning and scurrying about to make this our home. Odette saw us arrive and is feverish with rage at the sight of her competition! I wager the next few days or weeks will be full of cat fighting between the two!

  That is all my news for now, Michel. I will write again soon. I will write to Henri, Serge and the others, and give them your address. We will all keep in touch with each other from now on and let each other know of any news from our missing friends.

  I am so happy to know that you are not amongst the missing.

  We shall speak soon, Michel.

  All my love,

  Bertrand

  I close the letter and wipe the condensation from the window, looking out into the busy street of yellow taxis, women pushing prams, and am amazed at how the world is continuing to spin, when everything has fallen apart so badly.

  Miriam comes to my apartment on Christmas Eve at five o’clock. She is early. Too early.

  ‘You are early,’ I say, letting her in.

  ‘It is much nicer now, Michel.’ I see her looking around approvingly.

  I have decorated, bought rugs, cushions, pictures. All from flea markets. I want it to look like Frieda’s caravan – full of colour and life.

  There is a charcoal drawing that hangs in a gilded frame that you can see as soon as you walk into the room.

  ‘That is her?’ Miriam asks.

  ‘Yes. I asked one of the Poles who is an artist to do it from my memory. It took us almost a month to get it right.’

  ‘She is beautiful.’

  ‘She is.’

  In the drawing, Frieda is staring at the viewer, her long hair trailing over her shoulder, her lips parted as if at any moment she is going to laugh or speak.

  Miriam sits in a chair and I get her a drink.

  ‘Do you think you will fall in love again?’ she asks.

  ‘Maybe. But not like with Frieda.’

  ‘That’s what I think too. It won’t be the same again. It can never be the same, can it?’

  ‘Maybe that’s OK, for it to be different.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she says, then throws her wine back in one go.

  I pour more.

  ‘Do you think that jazz singer will be there tonight? Do you?’

  Part Four: Spring

  Nothing will die;

  All things will change

  […]

  A spring rich and strange,

  Shall make the winds blow

  Round and round,

  Thro’ and thro’,

  Here and there,

  Till the air

  And the ground

  Shall be fill’d with life anew.

  ‘Nothing Will Die’, Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Eighteen

  Fin

  Spring has arrived. It’s 1946 and there is a promise of warmth from the very first opening of a daffodil in the park. I have just enjoyed my twenty-eighth birthday and there is a lightness in my step that I have not felt in years.

  The grass is full of picnickers at lunch, enjoying the thaw and the brightness of colours that the park has to offer. Birds flit, seeking worms and taking crumbs from leftovers. I sit on a bench and watch ducks swim on the pond; now and again I throw a chunk of rye bread to them. If Miriam were here, she would scold me and tell me I was wasting food.

  Bertrand talks of coming to visit me and perhaps staying. Paris, he says, is not the same after the war; he cannot look about him without feeling fear. New York might be right for him. I would, of course, enjoy his company; a piece of my old life that could fit into this one.

  Miriam asks me why I took such a long lunch break and if I will go and watch Freddie sing tonight. Ever since she met him, she cannot stop mentioning him, and if I am honest, I have seen that giddy light in his eyes too. I wonder if they will ever admit it to themselves. I do hope they find a way.

  In the meantime, I dry-clean the suits and dresses of the rich Upper East-siders who have been loyal customers for years. By three o’clock, Miriam’s daughter Sarah is back from school and asks me if she can play in my workshop. I tell her she can’t, not without me. She pouts and I laugh at her. We go to the back room, my workshop. It is nothing but chunks of wood, some chisels, and a few knives I keep locked away. On one shelf sits a collection of horses carved from driftwood, which I found on the banks of the Hudson. On another shelf are miniature people; one taller than the others, one shorter, one with bulging muscles and a sword in his h
and, one wearing a top hat.

  Sarah likes the man with the top hat the most, and makes him direct the horses in a show for us. Whilst she plays, I work on another figure, one with her arms outstretched ready to grasp the trapeze that flies towards her. This piece has taken me so long. It is never right, never finished.

  ‘You are done for the day then?’ Miriam stands at the doorway. She is smiling, so I know she is joking with me.

  ‘I’ll close up,’ I say. ‘Go home.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  Miriam takes Sarah’s hand and she waves goodbye to me. I wave back, already looking forward to seeing her face tomorrow.

  Once Miriam leaves, the shop is quiet. I switch between cleaning and my carvings and running to the counter when the bell over the door rings to alert me to a new customer.

  We close at five. At a quarter to, the bell rings as I am carving the curve of Frieda’s back. It makes me jump and I take a wedge out of it. I throw it on the floor – it will never be finished.

  The customer is already piling a jacket on the counter and bending down to fetch something else.

  ‘It’s got a stain. From ice cream, of all things. Ice cream on wool! Can you get it out?’

  Her voice is rich and accented. I like it.

  ‘I can.’

  I bend down myself to find a new slip, and when I stand up again to fill it in, she is standing straight, staring at me, her mouth open.

  Then: ‘Michel.’

  My heart is beating so fast I think I am going to pass out. There is no air left in the shop, in the entire city.

  ‘Maman!’ A voice breaks the spell. A small girl is at her heel, tugging on her coat. ‘Maman!’ she says again.

  ‘Frieda,’ I say, as if I was expecting this very moment for years.

  ‘Michel,’ she says again.

  ‘Mamannnn.’ The child is irritable.

  ‘I thought—’ we both say at the same time, then smile, then shake our heads – mirror images of each other, confused, happy, scared.

  She bends down to the child and says something to her. The child goes to the green plastic chairs we have for people to wait on, and she climbs up, her pudgy legs swinging as she turns her head to look out of the window.

  ‘They told me you were dead,’ I whisper. It sounds wrong to say it in English. I say it again in French. ‘But you are here.’

  ‘They told me the same about you!’ Her eyes are filling with tears.

  ‘But… why?’ Then I think of the poor Italian couple in our bunk – the same illness.

  ‘Is this really happening?’ she asks.

  I lean over and stroke her cheek to check she is real. ‘I thought I saw you everywhere – all the time. In the street, in the supermarket.’

  ‘I saw you too.’

  She leans away from me and looks at the child. ‘They took me to the hospital,’ she says. ‘I didn’t wake for a week.’ Then she turns back to me, a tear rolling down her cheek. ‘They told me that my husband had died.’

  ‘Where did you go? After the hospital?’ I ask, still wanting to touch her, to make sure this is not one of my mad dreams.

  ‘I had no papers, and because of my situation a convent in New Jersey took me in.’

  ‘Your situation?’

  Frieda looks to the little girl on the chair once more, and my heart soars.

  ‘You have been here, in this city, the whole time?’

  ‘In Brooklyn.’

  ‘And now you are here.’

  ‘And now I am here.’

  The bell rings above the door again and one of our elderly customers, Mrs Gregson, comes in.

  ‘Michel,’ she starts, ‘I have a banquet and I must, just must, wear this one.’ She hands me a red velvet dress. ‘It is a mess. Smells of mothballs. Tomorrow?’

  I don’t answer and she looks at Frieda, then at me.

  ‘Tomorrow?’ she says again.

  I nod.

  ‘A ticket?’ she reminds me.

  I scribble down the basics, not caring what it says.

  She shakes her head at me and leaves.

  The child gets up from her chair. ‘Who is he?’ She points her finger at me, her eyes narrowed.

  ‘This is my friend, Michel,’ Frieda tells her.

  ‘I don’t like him.’ She takes Frieda’s hand and tugs at it.

  ‘She wants to go?’ I say; the girl is struggling to pull Frieda to the door.

  ‘She’s meant to be going to a ballet class,’ Frieda says, looking at the child, then at me.

  ‘Mamaaann!’ the child wails at her, then shoots me a look and sticks her tongue out at me like Kacper’s monkey, Gino.

  ‘I have to…’ Frieda says reluctantly.

  ‘That’s OK,’ I say, but I don’t mean it.

  ‘But I’ll be back – tomorrow,’ she says, and looks at the jacket.

  ‘Yes. For the jacket. Of course.’

  Frieda’s smile drops and I don’t know what to say.

  ‘Goodbye, Michel,’ she says, and the door opens and closes, the bell tinkling in her wake.

  I go to the door and turn the sign around to say we are closed. As soon as I do, I begin to weep.

  I go to see Miriam and tell her what happened.

  ‘Why did you let her leave?’ she asks me.

  ‘I don’t know!’ I say. ‘The child had a class. And, I don’t know. I didn’t know what to say. She didn’t either. She wanted to go… I don’t know.’ I put my head in my hands.

  ‘She’ll be back tomorrow?’

  I nod.

  ‘Well, then. Sort yourself out. Tomorrow your life starts again.’

  ‘And what about you?’ I ask, my eyes filling with tears – of joy, of regret, of absolute wonderment.

  ‘What about me? I have an even bigger family now. The girls can play together. Really, Michel, you do think too much.’ She kisses me on my cheek and tells me to go home and rest.

  I do not rest. I stay awake all night, listening as the swish-swish of traffic on wet tarmac becomes quieter and quieter.

  At around 3 a.m. there is little to be heard but the spatter of rain on the window and the knocking of the radiator as it wakes up.

  I get to the launderette by 6 a.m. and two hours later Miriam arrives. She fusses all morning – nothing is right, the bookkeeping is shoddy – she is nervous too.

  Every time the bell rings, we jump and my heart stops. By late afternoon, I think that if the bell rings again I might have a heart attack, and I listen out, but no noise comes.

  ‘It is almost five,’ Miriam says quietly to me.

  I am in the back, putting the final touches to a horse I wanted to give to my daughter. ‘She’ll come,’ I say, and I don’t look up.

  It seems to me that it is hours later – but Miriam tells me it is only minutes – when the bell chimes at last.

  I know without looking that she is here, and I walk straight out to see her. She is stood near the door and our daughter is peeking out behind Frieda’s legs. I can see that Frieda is as nervous as the child – I am too.

  ‘I came back,’ she says and smiles. But the smile does not reach her eyes as it used to.

  I want to take her in my arms, to spin her around and pretend that we had never been parted, but I do not. So much has changed, we have changed, and I don’t know if we can love each other like we once did, but I know we will try – if only for our daughter.

  Instead, I bend down to the child. ‘Hello,’ I say to her.

  ‘Her name is Michelle,’ Frieda says.

  ‘Michelle, this is for you.’ I take the wooden horse from my pocket and hand it to her.

  ‘A pony?’ Her eyes widen.

  ‘A pony.’

  ‘I like ponies.’

  ‘Me too.’

  She smiles.

  ‘And I like clowns,’ I tell her.

  ‘Me too!’ she says. ‘Maman says we can go to the circus. Maman says that there are people who can fly in the s
ky and magic people who can make things appear from nowhere.’

  ‘Like this?’ I say, and pull a nickel from her ear.

  ‘You’re magic!’ she says. ‘Like real magic.’

  ‘No,’ I tell her. ‘That’s your maman. She makes everything better – just like magic.’

  The child looks to Frieda and then to me.

  ‘Do you like the circus too?’ the little girl asks me, her eyebrows raised in question.

  ‘I do,’ I say. ‘It’s one of my favourite things.’

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  A Letter from Carly

  Hello,

  Firstly and most importantly, a huge thank you for reading The Ringmaster’s Daughter. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

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  The Ringmaster’s Daughter was inspired by the moving true story of Adolf Althoff, an Austrian circus owner during World War II who bravely hid four members of the Jewish Danner family in his circus. On 2 January 1995, Yad Vashem recognised Adolf and his wife Maria as Righteous Among the Nations. ‘We circus people see no difference between races or religions,’ said Adolf, when he received the honour.