Ascension (20 page)

Margit laughed. “That’s a good story. Where did you hear it?”

András’s shoulders lowered. “My father told it to me.”

Margit stopped laughing. “Do you miss him?”

“Yes.” András did not tell her that there were times when he had trouble seeing the faces of his parents in his mind.

“And Salvo. Does he miss your father?”

András nodded. “He does.”

“He never speaks of him. He never speaks of anything that has happened to him.”

András thought about this. “He was on his own. Etel and I were together, but he had no one. That’s why he’s different.”

“I’m glad you’re not like that.” Margit smiled again.

I could get used to that smile, András thought. He took her hand and they continued walking. They had no destination in mind.

W
HEN
S
ALVO INFORMED
C
OLE
F
ISHER
-F
IELDING
of his decision not to use a net, his reaction was mixed. The pure circus enthusiast in him loved the idea. And he knew audiences would go for it. But the F-F was known as a safe circus; no one had ever died while performing in the Extravaganza. He expressed his safety concerns to deaf ears. In the end Cole relented.

Their first night was a sell out, as most of the dates were that year. They would be in Madison Square Garden for another week, and then they would take the big top on the road, playing dates across the continent for the summer and early fall. The Ursaris followed the cat act, waiting nervously on the platform as the crowd marvelled at the animals’ surly obedience. Finally the cats were directed back to their cages, and the band played the Ursaris onto the wire.

For the first trick, Salvo and András each rode a bicycle across the wire. Salvo handed off his bicycle and they crossed back on András’s bike, Salvo doing a handstand on the handlebars. Next, Etel and Margit made a crossing on foot, stopping in perfect synchronicity to lean forward and place their poles on the wire, simultaneously executing handstands. As they did this trick, Salvo and András each strapped on a harness that secured a six-foot pole between them. When Etel and Margit arrived at the platform, Etel boosted Margit onto the pole, where she balanced as Salvo and András crossed. Etel rode the bicycle back across the tightrope then, so that both bicycles were on the same platform. Next came their final trick, by far the best one.

Without removing the harnesses, Salvo and András took to the bicycles, András in front, Salvo behind. Etel, an eight-foot balancing pole in her hands, stood on the pole between the bicycles. Margit stood behind her, without a balancing implement, holding on to Etel’s shoulders. On Salvo’s cue, the bicycles started forward. After they were in motion, Margit leapt up onto Etel’s back, her feet resting first on her hips, then under her arms, then on her shoulders. With what looked like minimal effort, she paused in a squat. Then, with no more hesitation than if her feet were firmly planted on the ground, she stood.

The effect took the audience aback. Fifty feet above them, a woman stood on the shoulders of another woman who stood on a pole supported by two men riding bicycles on a wire. And there was no net. As they reached the middle of the wire, more than one gasp involuntarily escaped from the audience. The woman on top had placed her hands on the shoulders of the woman below her and inverted her body in a handstand. She wobbled slightly as the performers moved to the end of the wire, and a
woman in the audience screamed. The crowd was otherwise so quiet that people on the opposite side of the ring heard her husband’s admonishments. They reached the far platform, finally, after what seemed to those watching like hours.

At first people were too shocked to know what to do. After several seconds, they stood, almost in unison, clapping, yelling and cheering wildly.

Up on the platform, Salvo completely misread the audience. To him they sounded angry, and many were whistling loud, shrill whistles, which in Europe was dangerously unlucky and a sign of extreme disapproval.

“Come quickly,” he said to the others, and he slid down the rope ladder as fast as he could and retreated to their corner of the performers’ area. There they huddled, András and Etel and Margit all agreeing with Salvo’s impression, believing that the crowd had hated their act and was calling for their heads.

A stagehand ran towards them, looking confused. “What are you doing? Get back out there,” he said, pulling on Salvo’s arm.

Salvo refused to budge. “Are you crazy? They’ll lynch us.”

“You’ve got it wrong, Ursari,” the man said. “They loved you. They want a bow. This is an ovation.”

It began to sink in. As they climbed the ladder to the wire and looked at the faces of individuals in the stands, they saw that indeed they were not angry, that they had thoroughly enjoyed the act. From the platform they gave a bow, waving, the enthusiastic crowd responding with a crescendo of applause.

Later, as they sat in their railcar, the others chided Salvo.

“They’ll lynch us,” Margit laughed, mimicking Salvo.

András said nothing, but smiled.

“Can you believe them?” Etel said. “They were crazy for us.”

“We’re a good act,” Margit said. “Maybe the best in the circus.”

“Be careful where you say that,” András said. He had already seen firsthand how jealous some performers could be.

Salvo sat off to the side, not joining the conversation. He was exhausted and worried. The act had not been as tight as he felt it should be. He could feel during the last trick that their timing had been off. They would have to practise harder. “We get up early tomorrow,” he said. “We have much to work on.”

Margit, her back to Salvo, made a face, which made András laugh, but no one said anything. There was a knock at the door, and before anyone could answer it, the door swung open.

Cole Fisher-Fielding, immaculately groomed and tuxedoed, strode into the railcar. “Congratulations, Ursaris,” he said. He presented Etel and Margit each with a bouquet of flowers. Salvo and András received cigars similar to the one protruding from the corner of his mouth. An attendant followed with a tray bearing a bottle and five glasses, which he set on the small table in the middle of the car before being dismissed with a casual wave of Fisher-Fielding’s hand.

Cole poured a golden brown liquid into the glasses and passed them out, two fingers for the women and three for the men. He raised his glass. Everyone followed his example. “To a long and happy partnership between the Fisher-Fielding Circus Company and the Magnificent Ursari Troupe,” he said, downing the contents of his glass.

Salvo drained his glass too, rye whisky burning his throat and stomach. “Thank you, sir. We’ll do our best.”

Fisher-Fielding laughed. “I have no doubt of that. Carry on.” And as quickly as he had come, he was gone.

Cole was more than a little preoccupied that evening. His control of the F-F was now threatened by a group he had christened “the Spouses.” Originally, no official agreement of partnership had
been made among the Fisher-Fieldings. When their brother Trevor, the third oldest, had died suddenly in 1920, lawyers were able to convince them of the need for a formal documentation of ownership. Since Trevor had never married and had no known heirs, they agreed to split the F-F’s ownership seven ways, Trevor’s former share being split between “the Respectables,” the siblings that had not been involved in the circus. It was a point of contention, and Cole had argued against it, but the others won out. Now it was coming back to haunt him.

His eldest circus brother had produced one child, Martin Fisher-Fielding, who was a firm ally of Cole’s. The second circus sibling, a sister named Mary, had borne two children, neither of whom had any interest in the circus whatsoever and had been content to sell Cole their share of the business. Here was where things got tricky for Cole. His sister Evelyn, his favourite sibling, two years older than him, had married a real-estate baron named Phillip Barnes against the advice of Cole, a fact that Phillip knew. His next oldest sibling, Winston Fisher-Fielding, had married a southern belle named Rebecca, and they’d had a son, Norris Fisher-Fielding. Following first Winston and then Evelyn’s death, Phillip Barnes and Rebecca Fisher-Fielding married. Though it reminded Cole far too much of
Hamlet
for any degree of comfort, Norris didn’t seem to mind his mother and uncle engaging in matrimony; in fact, he seemed enthusiastic about it. Rebecca, who had never much cared for Cole, and Phillip, who still begrudged the fact that Cole had advised against his marriage to Evelyn, now controlled two-sevenths of the F-F.

Cole’s brother Peter had died nearly twenty years earlier, leaving his wife, Charlotte, with half his interest, and his son John with the other half. John, in an attempt to spite his mother, whom he deeply resented for an unhappy childhood, had always sided
with Cole in the past. Charlotte was great friends with Rebecca Fisher-Fielding-Barnes and always voted with her interests.

As a result, Cole, between his shares and the support of his nephews Martin and John, controlled a fifty per cent share of the F-F, which was enough to swing any vote. A stipulation of the one-seventh share that the rest of the family controlled was that they didn’t have any vote unless there was a tie, in which case they cast the deciding opinion.

Three days earlier, John Fisher-Fielding had been killed in an automobile accident. He was unmarried and hadn’t left a will, and as a result his share of the F-F Circus Company would revert to his mother, his closest living relative. Now things had swung into uncertainty: Cole Fisher-Fielding controlled three-sevenths of the company, as did the Spouses. This meant that any vote would be tied, and the Respectables had the tiebreaker.

In the past, the committee of ten or so varied relatives that made up the Respectables had shown a complete inability to grasp the business of circus entertainment, concerned with nothing else than the financial rewards of their collective one-seventh interest. Cole was relatively certain that in the event of a tie, they could be easily lured into the Spouses’ camp by the promise of larger profits. They neither knew nor cared about the intent or the feelings of the original siblings. Few could even keep straight in their heads who was who.

Fortunately, Cole had been elected to a five-year term as president of the Fisher-Fielding Circus Company in 1937 and would have four more years before he’d be in any real danger. Still, there would be a fight ahead, he knew.

The wire walkers, at rest in their railcar, knew nothing of the circus’s politics. As they lay down for the night, they fell asleep: first András, then Margit, then Etel. Salvo, kept awake by fears of the
dark, elephants, the future and the past, did not know that elsewhere Cole Fisher-Fielding was awake as well, with fears of his own.

O
NE OF THE FIRST PEOPLE
S
ALVO MET
in the Extravaganza was a dark-skinned man named Emil Narwha. He might have been from India, or he might have been French, or he might have been from just down the road from wherever they were on a given day. Salvo had never asked Emil about his past and Emil had never asked Salvo, an unspoken arrangement that seemed to serve them both. For the first few weeks neither man spoke much. They stood and leaned against the side wall of the main tent, watching the bustle of the F-F pass them by, giving no indication of what they thought about it all. It was only after quite a while that Salvo discovered Emil was the head elephant wrangler, an exceedingly important position. He had held this post for over thirty years, long enough for the elephants to regard him as one of their kind, to look at the leathery old man as their father.

Salvo watched him work with the elephants, wondering how anyone could place his trust in a beast so large, something that could kill him without effort. Emil Narwha did just this, however, to Salvo’s continual amazement. Gentle and patient Emil trained the elephants to do his bidding, and the elephants responded with their nearly complete cooperation.

After months of nods and abbreviated hellos, Salvo decided to ask Emil about what had been bothering him since he’d first discovered Emil’s occupation.

Emil looked at him in surprise. “Afraid? That is an odd thing for a man like you to ask.”

Salvo smiled and shrugged, feeling a little foolish. “I would walk the highest wire in the world before I would let an elephant touch me with its nose.”

“Trunk,” Emil said. “And you would never get me on any wire.”

“But you are not afraid at all?”

Emil thought before replying. “Some people believe all animals are good. I do not believe this. I have seen an elephant stalk a man, always watching him with one eye, waiting for him to make a mistake, to get too close. And I have seen that elephant crush his enemy, and I would swear that the elephant enjoyed the man’s screams and the crunching of his bones beneath his feet. I see that an animal can hold evil within it, and I’ve no doubt of that. But most are not this way; certainly none of my elephants. I treat them well, and they treat me well.”

Salvo frowned. “How do you know if an elephant’s evil?”

“Same as people. Easy to tell if you look properly.”

Yet it seemed to Salvo that a great amount of evil was very well hidden. It could hide anywhere, in the hearts of strangers, loved ones, even in his own heart. It also seemed to him that hidden evil was the worst kind, and he envisioned it stalking him, huge and grey and shadowy. There was no escaping it, no running away.

“Cheer up, Ursari. Maybe one day you can ride on one of my elephants. Then you’ll see.”

Salvo shook his head no, and Emil chuckled as he walked back towards the menagerie. “You’ll see one day. You will change your mind.”

I doubt that very much, Salvo said to himself, but as he walked away he felt a certain kinship with Emil, a new admiration for the things he did not understand. As he passed the elephants, though, he could not bring himself to even look at them. He still remembered Good Bear the Bear, and to catch the gaze of a sorrowful camel or giraffe could move him near to tears. But the elephants were different, somehow. Salvo hated them. He felt that they were
assessing him, plotting against him, and that if they ever got the chance they would do him whatever harm they could, a suspicion that had just been unintentionally reinforced. Sometimes on a certain cue from Emil, the elephants would join trunk to tail to trunk, marching wherever directed, and more than once in his endless moments before sleep, Salvo had visions of an endless train of elephants rushing towards him, relentlessly seeking to grind him into the earth, to tear him limbless. There were times when Salvo thought he might like to kill them.