Ascension (33 page)

On the ground circus staff scrambled to erect a makeshift net for those still on the wire. By the time Anna and then András dropped into the net, medical staff had already strapped Daniel onto a gurney and taken him to the hospital. They did the same for Mika and Elsabeth, but there was less haste. Once Anna and András were safe, Jacob was able to make it to the platform on his own, as were Salvo and Etel. János was there waiting, his face bloodless and his hands shaking. They rushed down the ladder, Jacob running in the direction they had taken Mika, and Etel and János following Salvo to the net.

Salvo took Anna in his arms, holding her tightly before he allowed the paramedics to take them all to the hospital. Anna wept fiercely, knowing that Elsabeth and Mika were dead and that Daniel was near to it, if he wasn’t dead already. She did not have to tell Salvo that the world had fallen.

S
ALVO WAS THE ONLY ONE
of them who was not injured. Anna’s shoulder had dislocated when Salvo caught her, and her knee was badly twisted. Jacob pulled both his hamstrings, and András had been hit in the head by Daniel’s pole, bruising him badly and giving him a concussion. Etel had internal bleeding, having hit the wire hard. Even János was hurt; he sprained his ankle going down the ladder.

Daniel’s injuries were the most serious. His spine was broken in three places, but miraculously he was not paralyzed. He had slipped into a coma, however, and it was unclear when or if he would regain consciousness. There were internal injuries as well, but the doctors were not sure exactly how serious they were.

In three days’ time there would be a funeral for Mika and Elsabeth.

T
HE DAY AFTER THE FALL
, Salvo went to see Martin Fisher-Fielding. Martin was sombre, obviously shaken by what had happened. He felt partially responsible, having known how dangerous the act was and still letting them do it, because it was good and it sold tickets.

Salvo tried to reassure him. “It is not your fault. We would have done it in a different circus if you had said no.”

Martin bit his lip, knowing Salvo indeed would have. “What happened up there?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Someone made a mistake, I guess. I don’t know who.”

“I’m so sorry, Salvo.”

“I know.”

“If you ever want to come back, there will always be a place for you in the F-F.”

“Thank you. I think we will need some time off to recover. But I will walk tonight.”

Martin stopped short. “What?”

“I know it is a solo walk, and that it is not so good an act. But I want to walk tonight.”

“Salvo, I don’t think—”

“I would consider it a favour.”

Martin looked at Salvo and saw he was determined. He knew it was not a good idea, but he could not deny him. “All right. But be careful.”

“Thank you.” Salvo turned and left, not closing the door behind him. His mind was preoccupied and his heart heavy.

That night Salvo walked, and for the first time in his life, the world did not recede when he stepped onto the wire. He knew that this walk was different. He was not walking for himself, and he was not walking for the wire. Salvo walked for his girls; it was the only way he knew to honour them.

He used no pole and the band played no music. The audience watched silently, everyone aware of what had happened the night before, aware of what it must be costing this man to be on the wire. As he reached the spot where they had fallen, Salvo Ursari knelt, placing his hands on the wire. The audience did not know that in his mind Salvo was touching their eyelids, gently forcing them closed, a task someone else had done before he had reached them. He stayed kneeling for a very long time, but no one below moved an inch. Finally he rose and continued, his tears dropping from the wire and soaking into the sawdust on the ground without a sound. As he finished and collapsed to the floor of the platform, the audience applauded tentatively, aware that they had witnessed something they did not fully comprehend. Though in later years Salvo’s memory of that day would be blurred by fatigue and grief, no one down below would ever forget it.

T
he second half of the 1964 circus season brought the lowest attendance figures in the Fisher-Fielding Extravaganza’s history. Whether this was a result of the Ursaris’ fall or whether it had been coming anyway was a matter for speculation, but either way there was little denying that the glory days of the F-F were at an end. Martin was unable to think of anything that would bring them back; at the end of it all was the cold hard fact that people just weren’t interested in the magic that made the circus great. There was no way to reverse this change, it seemed. He doubted even Cole himself could have made things any better, but he often wished the old man were still alive so that they could try.

That year the Fisher-Fielding Circus Company barely broke even, and it was more than likely that it would lose money the following year. Many within the organization wanted to sell the show; despite the seeming futility of going on, there had been substantial offers made by outside interests for the company. But since Martin owned a controlling share there was little anyone could do until he made a move.

Martin considered his options long and hard. Were this not a family business, the life’s blood of his father and his aunts and uncles, he would have sold long ago. Instead, he decided to push forward. When Charlotte Fisher-Fielding died, Martin immediately
bought up her one-seventh of the company. Neither Norris nor his mother and stepfather had the money to do this, and even Martin had to borrow heavily to make the purchase. A provision in the original partnership agreement allowed him to nullify the clause that had prohibited the sale of Respectable shares; the founders had stipulated that once someone controlled more than four of the seven F-F holdings, they could change the company charter. Nearly all of the Respectables were willing to sell him their shares, seeing, as everyone else did, that the circus would never again be as profitable as it had once been. This development further infuriated the remaining Spouses, but they had little recourse. When the dust had settled Martin controlled just under five-sevenths of the Fisher-Fielding Circus Company, with only Rebecca Fisher-Fielding-Barnes and Phillip Barnes holding a remaining seventh each, and one stubborn old Respectable holding on to his fractional interest because he liked the idea of owning part of a circus. Many wondered why Martin was going to such pains to take control of an obviously failing business, and his sanity was even questioned in some circles.

F
OR EIGHT WEEKS
D
ANIEL
U
RSARI LAY UNCONSCIOUS
, and then, just when the doctors thought it unlikely he would ever wake up, he opened his eyes and rejoined the world. It would take another year for his bones to heal, but he would live. He would never walk the wire again, doctors said. His heels had been shattered so badly that it would always be painful for him to put weight on them, and certainly he would never be able to meet the physical demands of the wire. He said nothing when they told him this news. Though there was nothing physically preventing him from speaking, he had not uttered a single word since regaining consciousness.

Anna went to visit him every day, and finally when he was well enough to be moved they took him back to the farm, installing him in the upstairs room he once shared with János. From his bed he could see the door to the room that had been his sisters’, and as he lay recovering, he tried hard not to look in that direction, but always his eyes found their way to the empty space of the entrance.

The fall was never mentioned, nor was the wire; when Salvo came to see him he, too, did not speak. Salvo sat beside the bed, as silent as Daniel, and hours would pass without either of them moving. When Salvo left he would gently squeeze Daniel’s arm before going.

Every day Salvo went through the fall in his mind. He had seen so little, his back being turned to the others, and he could not figure out what had gone wrong. That he had no idea what caused the fall troubled him greatly; if the source of something could not be identified, there was no way to prevent it from happening in the future. And despite all that had happened, Salvo had every intention of returning the House to the wire. It would not be the same without Mika and Elsabeth. The thought of them would always bring him pain, but there was nothing he could do to change that. His feelings were simple, and they had been steady throughout his life. The dead die and are buried, and the living go on. He was not cold about their passing. He felt the girls’ deaths as deeply as anyone, except perhaps Anna, but he could not let their deaths kill him too. The wire was his life and he would walk again.

Anna vowed she would never again set foot on the wire, and no one doubted that she meant it. She refused to even speak of the wire and removed all photographs of the family performing from the walls, placing them in a box in the attic and never looking at them again. She was angry—a slow, hard anger that seeped its way
into her every thought and action—and after a while she forgot how to
not
be angry. Most of all she was angry with Salvo. It was he who had put them on the wire, he who had thought up this needlessly dangerous trick, he who had talked everyone into performing it. They had enjoyed a good life on their farm, and were it not for Salvo’s unbending selfishness, they would still be enjoying it. Now her girls were dead, and she was left with this crippled orphan son who was not really even hers. Though she had never thought it possible, she sometimes wondered if she hated her husband.

W
ITH THE MONEY THEY HAD MADE IN THE
F-F, András and Etel bought a small house several miles down the road from Salvo and Anna’s farm. András was fifty-six years old, and a hard life was beginning to catch up with him. He spent his nights coughing, and in the days he sat in a chair in the front room and listened to records, any Romany music he could find. He knew he had turned his back on his heritage, that he had all but become a
gadjo
, and for this he felt a pain that nothing seemed able to soothe. He had done what he could, he knew, raising Etel and then János, and knew that if he had stayed in Europe, he would likely have died in Hitler’s camps like so many other Roma, but this fact did little to console him. When he realized that he and Etel no longer spoke to each other in Romany, and that János spoke only English, he knew that with himself and his siblings would die a thousand years of Ursari Roma. The name and blood would live on in his son, but this boy was a Canadian, not a Rom, and what was more, it was a good thing for him that it was such. János knew of their stories but never told them to others, and András doubted he would live to see his grandchildren to tell his stories to them. András knew this would make his father turn in his grave, and he felt shame.

Etel, who had no memory of either of her parents and knew them only in story, felt none of this disappointment. In fact, she felt nothing. Etel Ursari was completely devoid of emotion, and she knew it, and she did not care. She believed herself a ghost, a machine, and though every night in her sleep she saw images of the fall, she was completely detached from it, as if she were watching a movie that had failed to engage her. She had been turned off and had no desire to be turned back on. She spent her days cleaning a house that did not need cleaning.

For whatever reasons, both András and Etel failed to notice that János was acting strangely. Maybe it was because the change was gradual, or maybe it was because there was no one thing that marked a transformation. Either way, János’s entire attitude towards life had shifted. He was easily disturbed or excited, and he was getting more and more reckless as time went on. He bought a car and drove it with little or no regard for his own safety, putting it in the ditch several times in the first month he had it. He was not harmed in any of these minor mishaps, which had an unfortunate impact: János believed he was invincible.

János was alone. Of the four children who had grown up on the Ursari farm, he was the only one who was not killed or severely injured in the fall. That it was largely because he had the sense to quit the wire at the right time did not factor into his thinking. After the fall, there was nothing that could harm him. Death was obviously not interested in claiming him. It had touched everyone else. He could see how his father and aunts and uncle were faring, and Daniel’s condition was not getting better. Only János, in his own mind, was untouched by the fall. If anything, it had made him stronger.

In the spring Salvo decided that he would put in some corn. Since they had begun performing the House he had not been
growing crops, but now he felt he should be doing something, and tending to the farm seemed as good a thing as any. He telephoned Jacob, hoping he would help him with the seeding, but no one answered the phone at his parents’ farm. After several days of attempting to reach him by phone, Salvo got into his truck and drove to the Blacke farm.

As he got out of his truck, the front door of the farmhouse opened, and Mrs. Blacke came out. She was a small woman, older than Salvo, her hair thin and white. She came down the front steps and stopped ten feet from him.