Pegasus: A Novel (14 page)

“Well, life in the circus certainly isn’t familiar to any of them, but at least they’re
safe. Being in a circus in Germany would seem strange to him too.”

“I suppose so. He said they’re living in a trailer smaller than our
boxcar for the horses. It must be very hard.” Marianne sounded sorry for him, and
Alex nodded. He was sure it was difficult, but less so than a labor camp, and he was
grateful they were safe, particularly after
Kristallnacht
had stunned the entire world.

Alex went to see Nick’s father the next day. Paul had been sick for the past two weeks,
and looked as though he had aged twenty years since Nick and the boys left. His solitude
now was hard on him, with no hope of seeing his son and grandsons anytime in the near
future, if ever again. The turmoil in Germany appeared to be increasing, and certainly
not diminishing. Paul had a bad cough, and Alex thought he looked feverish and said
he should call the doctor. But Paul insisted he was fine. He didn’t look it, but Alex
didn’t want to make a fuss, or send the doctor to him against his will.

“Marianne had a letter from Toby,” he said before he left, hoping to cheer him up
with news of the boys, but Paul just looked sadder, and hearing about them made him
miss them more.

“Are they all right?” he asked, and Alex nodded, and didn’t want to tell him they
were sad, or at least Toby had been when he wrote.

“They’re fine. He wrote it the day they got to Florida, so they hadn’t settled in
yet. It’s all very new to them. They’ll adjust.” Paul nodded, and thanked Alex for
the visit when he left. The house felt so empty to him now, whenever he went to the
main schloss. It echoed and seemed ghostly without his son and the boys. It was a
lonely life for him now.

Alex was equally sad without his friend. Marianne wrote to Toby now every day, with
news from home, however little there was. She didn’t tell him that
Kristallnacht
had frightened everyone. It had been so violent, and so many people had gotten hurt,
been put in jail, or simply disappeared. She was happy to be in the countryside, where
none of the chaos and turmoil in the cities affected them. She
did mention that her father had decided not to give their Christmas ball that year.
It was only a month away, but with so much disruption in Germany, and people being
taken away and losing their homes in the cities, he had decided that it seemed wrong
to give a ball. And without his friend Nick to share the festivities with him, he
said it wouldn’t have been fun anyway, and Marianne agreed. She wasn’t in the mood
either. Nick and the boys moving away, and so suddenly, felt like a huge loss to all
of them. And the winter seemed cold and dark. It felt like a time for mourning, not
joy.

She told Toby that she had gone hunting with her father, but even that hadn’t been
enjoyable, and like a bad omen, the fox had gotten away. She told him, too, that the
little Lipizzaner foal was growing, and loved to run now, and he was still coal black
as he would be for several years. And they were expecting another one soon. She said
that she hoped that Pluto and Nina and the other horses were doing well. She told
him whatever she could of her daily doings, which seemed very dull to her now. She
didn’t tell him that her father seemed sad, and so was she, that life without her
friend Toby and his little brother seemed empty to her. They had seen each other almost
every day since they were born. And the days were so lonely now without him.

When Marianne got Toby’s letter, it was the day before Thanksgiving in America, and
by then Nick and the boys had been in Florida for almost two weeks. Nick had been
assigned a rehearsal schedule, to develop his act, in one of the rings in the huge
tent, and he was practicing there every day, with Toby most of the time. Sometimes
he just went there with Pluto and Nina—Pegasus and Athena now, he was getting used
to their new names. He was practicing their
liberty commands and the precision training, and he was learning a great deal every
day. And Toby’s skills were improving too. The Arabians were easier to work with,
although less interesting to watch.

Nick hadn’t run into Christianna Markovich again. She was obviously practicing at
a different time, and he hadn’t thought of her since his performance for Mr. North.
Thanks to Lucas, he was meeting many new people, Eastern Europeans, and Germans, and
some French. Through Pierre, Lucas had met many of the clowns, and brought some of
them back to the trailer to meet his father and brother, and he always had fun with
them. He had finally met the tattooed lady and was thrilled. And he and his little
friend Rosie had become inseparable, and whenever possible, got up to mischief together.
They played marbles and hopscotch, hide-and-seek among the trailers, and all the games
other children did around the world, and they visited the elephants and got a ride
on them whenever possible. They went to watch a new contortionist, and Lucas wanted
to learn to walk on stilts, and Pierre the clown showed him how. He brought him a
small pair, and Lucas practiced with them every night. All he wanted to do was use
them to perform during intermission with the clowns. Nick tried not to comment on
it, because this was the world they lived in now, but the prospect of his son becoming
a clown one day didn’t sound like a worthy goal to him. But like it or not, they were
circus performers, just like everyone else there. Nick tried to accept it as their
destiny for the time being, although it was hard to imagine being there forever.

Nick finally met Rosie and Katja’s mother one afternoon when she came to pick up the
girls at Nick’s trailer. She was wearing a leotard and a tutu, and had just come from
rehearsal herself.

“Thank you for being so kind to my girls,” she said with a warm smile. Her name was
Gallina. She was a strikingly pretty woman, as
lovely as her daughters, and she moved with agile grace and had a lithe athletic body.

“They’re beautifully behaved and lovely girls,” he said kindly, and meant it. He liked
them both, as did his boys.

She and Nick chatted for a few minutes, and he noticed that despite her Czech accent,
she was well spoken when she spoke German, as though she had been properly educated
when she was young. He was curious about them. She explained that she was from Prague,
and her father had sent her to boarding school in Germany as a child, while her parents
traveled with the circus. She had only come back to them at fourteen, and she had
insisted on training for the high wire, despite their protests. Her parents had been
gymnasts and trapeze artists, not a high-wire act like the Markoviches, and she had
eventually married the girls’ father, Sergei, whose family was famous for their work
on the trapeze. Nick was beginning to understand that there was a real hierarchy in
the circus, a kind of nobility, depending on which acts they performed, where they
came from, and how long they’d done it. Her husband’s family was Czech too. He had
five brothers who had come to Ringling Brothers with him, and his parents had since
retired. They stayed in Czechoslovakia, as had her own, and her brother and sister
were still working with her parents, as gymnasts in a German circus.

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.