Vaclav & Lena (9 page)

Vaclav saw Lena looking at everything. Vaclav mostly looked out the window when he rode the subway, and it took a very special thing, like a homeless person with no shoes dressed up as an alien or someone singing very, very loudly, to make him look.

When Lena had seen everything that was on the train, she looked out the window. Out of the window of the train, Lena saw: houses with tiny backyards filled with toys, clotheslines and more clotheslines, graffiti in bright colors, garbage that looked familiar and unfamiliar, the tops of buildings, billboards somebody forgot about, billboards with somebody’s name written on them in black spray paint, the sky, pigeons in trees, the stop for Neck Road, the stop for Ocean Parkway, and then, finally, the sign for Coney Island/Stillwell Avenue, which was when it was time to get off the train.

THE WORLD, COLORED IN
…

V
aclav took Lena’s hand again when it was time to get off the train, and he pointed to the gap between the train and the platform, to show Lena to be careful. They both walked along the platform to the stairs, with Rasia following closely behind. Vaclav knew the way to exit the subway station, because he had been to Coney Island before, but he glanced back just to make sure that his mother was still there.

A hot wind was blowing as they came down the stairs from the elevated train platform, and at the edges of the wind Lena could smell a smell like the back of the supermarket, where they keep the fish. As they crossed Surf Avenue, Lena and Vaclav could see the Cyclone snaking above the hot-dog stands and the tarot-card lady and the kids and the ladies in tight denim shorts. In the space between the streets, past the Cyclone and the hot dogs and the people, Lena could see the beach and, beyond that, the ocean.

To Lena, who had grown up in a tiny brownish-gray apartment, with her tiny brownish-gray
babushka
, and walked along cement streets to a big brick school, it looked as if the world had been colored in.

Together they snaked their way quickly through the games and the booths selling hats and T-shirts, and all the wild things and wild people and fried food. It seemed like everyone was in their way, and to Vaclav it felt as if they were already wasting time. Lena, holding tightly to his hand, did not look around her at all the people the way she had on the subway. She looked through everything, straight ahead of her, and not once did she take her eyes off the big, blue ocean.

They squeezed and excuse-me’d their way through everything and came out the other end, on the hot wooden boardwalk, where the boards squished a little bit with each step like piano keys. Rasia made her way to a bench and sat down.

“One minute,” she said. “We take a rest.” It was too hot out, Rasia was perspiring everywhere, and her sciatica was roaring up her leg.

“Come on, Mom, let’s go to the rides,” Vaclav said.

“One minute,” Rasia said.

“One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi …” Vaclav began, counting off the seconds to a minute.

“Listen, Mr. Ants-in-pants, I didn’t mean one minute exactly, I meant let’s rest for a little while,” she said. Vaclav looked like he would burst.

“Come on!” he said. “Time is running! We are missing the rides!” He could barely contain himself. She looked up at the gigantic Wonder Wheel looming over them. She could see, from where she sat, the baskets and the tops of the heads of the people inside. It didn’t look very fast at all.

“Come on!” he said. “Come on come on come on!”

“Okay, listen,” she said. “You go straight to the Wonder Wheel, you ride one time, and you come straight back here.” And she handed Vaclav ten dollars in singles. She and Vaclav had talked at length about all the rules that would prevent all of the horrible things she saw each week on American television from happening to her son. He knew not to talk to strangers, how to ask a policeman for help, how to yell and shout if anyone bothered him, and to stay exactly where he was if he got lost. He would be fine for five minutes.

“Yes!” he said. “Lena, let’s go!”

As she watched him walk out into the big American crowd, under the big American roller coasters, she felt the world spinning wildly away from her, and she sat and cried because she was happy and sad that he did not look back, because of how much she loved his little body and his awkward, cowlicky head and that tiny rib cage, and the way that he knew, already, to take a girl’s hand if she was afraid.

CHILDREN LESS THAN FORTY-FOUR INCHES BUT GREATER THAN THIRTY-FIVE INCHES
…

V
aclav and Lena walked across the boardwalk, away from the ocean, Vaclav dragging Lena behind him by the hand, because Lena kept looking behind her at the ocean, always wanting to see if it was moving, because it seemed to come toward her, away and back, and it seemed like it might creep up, or rush at her suddenly and crush everything. She imagined the water flooding in through all the stalls and all the rides; she imagined everything being underwater; she imagined floating on top of the water, sitting on the top of the Ferris wheel.

“First we will ride the Wonder Wheel! There is no line!” Vaclav said, and he pulled Lena toward the entrance, rushing to beat the imaginary hordes.

Vaclav and Lena waited at the gate for the man to come take their money. The gate was painted blue, and where it was chipping you could see that it had also been painted green, and orange, and black, and all the way at the bottom, it was red and rusty.

The man said, “Hey, girlie, you’re not tall enough to ride this ride,” and he pointed at a clown made out of plywood, extending a plywood hand, palm down. On the belly of the clown were painted the words
YOU MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE!

The man had talked to Lena loudly, and she did not know what he had said, and she looked to Vaclav, feeling afraid. Vaclav looked at the clown, and he looked at Lena, and he knew there was no chance that he could maybe make the man think that Lena was tall enough, even by making her stand on her tippy-toes.

“It’s okay. Is not so fun anyway,” Vaclav said. Lena didn’t understand what had happened, she didn’t understand the clown or the words on the clown, she only understood that she had not been allowed to ride the ride but that Vaclav had forgiven her.

Vaclav and Lena walked back to Rasia’s bench.

“We cannot ride that ride; it is not for us,” Vaclav said. “We will go on a different ride.…” He turned behind him and pointed at the Cyclone.

“That one,” he said.

“Okay, you ride this ride and then come right back,” Rasia said, but at the entrance to the Cyclone, another clown told them that this time they were both not tall enough. Vaclav thought that his mother would not mind if they tried just one more ride. As Vaclav and Lena walked through all the stalls, they saw more and more rides, all of them guarded by the
YOU MUST BE THIS TALL
clown. When they thought that they might have spotted a ride that did not have a clown, suddenly someone would move aside to reveal that the clown had in fact been lurking there the entire time.

Vaclav did not give up, however, and he pulled Lena through the people and the rides and out the other end, so that they were almost back on Surf Avenue and Lena could not see the ocean at all. If they had only walked the other way, they would have found all the kiddie rides, but they didn’t.

Vaclav and Lena stood on the corner, the rides behind them, the subway and all of Brooklyn and then all of Manhattan and the United States of America ahead of them. They did not know it yet, but they were standing right in front of the world-famous Coney Island Sideshow theater.

THE WORLD FAMOUS CONEY ISLAND SIDESHOW THEATER
…

“O
nly
five dollars
!” They turned around to see a man in a black hat and a tuxedo suit, standing on a tiny stage in front of a building painted in wild colors. There were signs all over the building that said freak show and beer, and these were things, in addition to the very dark entrance, that made Vaclav think that he and Lena were, again, too little to go in.

“Men, women, and children! Human beings of all ages, shapes, and sizes, step right up! Come on in!” the man hollered. The man had said “all ages, shapes, and sizes,” but no matter what the man said, Vaclav thought that he and Lena should stay away, because he had a strange feeling about the place, which reminded him of the Video Palace where he was allowed to look at any video or DVD in the front of the store, but when he had accidentally gone behind a black curtain, not out of curiosity but by accident, the video clerk had yelled at him and he had felt embarrassed and afraid and hot and angry.

Vaclav wanted something good to happen so that Lena would be happy, but there were no more rides. So he decided to take a risk. He took out all of his dollar bills, and he handed them to the man who had yelled, “Come on in!” The man leaned back as he slid Vaclav’s dollars into his back pocket, and then he reached out his hand to shake Vaclav’s hand. Vaclav took it, afraid still that the man would turn them away, and that as punishment the man would keep his money. The man shook his hand up and down.

“That’s a good choice, son! Show’s starting, go ahead on in!” The man let go of Vaclav’s hand, and in they went, into a dark hallway. At the end of the hallway there was a brightly painted sign that said
FAMOUS CONEY ISLAND SIDESHOW THEATER
with a big arrow beneath it, pointing to a door that was painted black and had dusty footprints on it.

Vaclav opened the door, and he and Lena stepped into the theater and a tingle went through their bodies from the tops of their heads all the way down to their toes inside of their socks and sneakers, and they both kept their sounds inside, sounds that were gasping or giggling or yelling, but the sounds pushed around inside of their heads and their eyeballs grew bigger and bigger with the pushing of the sounds, so that they could see more and more and more of what there was to see. They had to leave halfway through so that Vaclav’s mother would not worry, but what they saw was enough to change everything.

After the sideshow, Vaclav and Lena went right back to Rasia. Without even talking about it, they knew that they were going to keep the sideshow a secret. Something can feel like it should be a secret if it is very close to your insides, so that if you tell it and someone else says a bad thing about it or, worse, laughs at it, then you will feel very hurt. Also, Vaclav knew that he had not exactly followed the rules, that the sideshow was not exactly the same as a ride, and that he might get in trouble if he told his mother. So it became a secret.

When Rasia asked them how the ride was, Vaclav told her that it was great but that he was ready to go home, because it was so hot out and because the rest of the rides were stupid and boring. When they got home, Vaclav and Lena went immediately into Vaclav’s room to be alone with what they had seen.

The very first thing they did was make a list of the sideshow performers, and the tricks that they had performed, and all the things they had used.

FIVE YEARS LATER, SOMETHING ELSE THAT BECAME A SECRET
…

“T
he golden fringed bikini of Heather Holliday,” says Lena. She says it quietly, like she is breathing it, not like she is saying it to Vaclav, just like she is saying it to the universe, like she is saying a prayer.

He looks down at Lena from his chair. Lena sees the concern on Vaclav’s face, mostly in the eyebrows and a little bit around the nose.

“The golden fringed bikini of Heather Holliday,” says Lena, “is perfect.”

Vaclav knows that this is not a good thing for Lena to wear, and he also knows that Lena wants very badly to wear it.

“Okay,” says Vaclav, “for you it shall be.” Lena smiles and begins thinking about how to replicate the most amazing costume ever worn by any magician’s assistant anywhere in the world, ever.

“We begin planning the act tonight. We begin with lists,” Vaclav tells Lena, and Lena gets on her belly on the floor next to the bed and lengthens her body out at the hands and at the toes so that she can reach far under the bed and with her fingertips touch and pull at the magical box that holds all the lists and plans for their first-ever magic show together. Vaclav plops down on the floor in front of her with his legal pad and his pen, ready to make more lists. Lena lifts the lid off the box gently, ceremoniously, careful not to disturb any magic that may be brewing beneath.

They begin by un-wax-sealing the many folded lists, one at a time, reading each one carefully. They start with the lists that they made the very first day they met each other, when they came home from Coney Island and Vaclav wrote down everything they saw, and all the things the master of ceremonies said about the performers.

SPECIALTIES OF THE GREAT FREDINI

1. World’s worst magician
^*

2. Human blockhead

3. Sword swallower

4. Ventriloquist

5. Metamorphosis, illusion, and levitation
^**

*
The Great Fredini is not the world’s best living magician; that is David Copperfield. He is also not the greatest magician of all time; that is Harry Houdini, who is dead. He is most certainly, also, not the worst. This is a funny act with comedy, and the joke is that he is actually a good magician, and he performs many excellent tricks and illusions
.

**
This is Vaclav’s favorite part
.

COSTUME AND PHYSICAL APPEARANCE OF THE GREAT FREDINI

The Great Fredini is about seven feet tall and weighs about three hundred pounds, in Vaclav’s estimation. He wears a wide range of costumes, including:

1. Zebra-striped sequined tailcoat