Six: In which Cecil awakes to new realities
Cecil emerged from the tent he had shared with the emaciated juggler and what he discovered were called sumo wrestlers from the Far East. They three lay asleep still, but Cecil found he was restless when the sun crept through a slit in the tent and fell across his face. In the stillness of the camp, the early light played brightly across the dusty rubble strewn ground, jarring his senses awake. He wandered into the largest tent, shuffling sawdust under his feet. Light streamed through tears and slits illuminating the dust filled air, highlighting the shadows. Here and there a rat was caught in a beam of sunlight before scuttling back into the dark with pilfered treasure. It was utterly real, utterly depressing.
Was it a trick of the light that had made the circus so appealing the night before? Cecil wanted to cry, but could not. He was too grown up in the eyes of his town, and had been for years—he was out of practice. He tried to hold on to his memory of the giraffe coming out of the hat and his conversation with magician and his daughter, but his heart faltered, his mind faltered. He could not dismiss the experience of the night before or the present morning out of hand. Leaving the tent he began to run blindly through the haphazardly laid camp, not thinking of where he would go, or even sure he wanted to leave.
He felt a great pain pulse through his head and chest and vaguely perceived he was falling, then everything went black. He awoke on the cot he had spent the night on. Someone was stroking his face with a damp cloth and he heard the voice of the magician’s daughter saying, with something of a laugh, but no malice, “You ran into Ping the sumo wrestler.”
Seven: In which Cecil does some thinking out loud
A little later, though he still felt like someone had used his head as the drum accompanying an ancient tribal ritual, Cecil allowed himself to be led around the camp by the magician’s daughter, whose name was Katerina. She was rather pretty, after all.
“This is where the acrobats practice on the high wire and trapeze,” she said, leading him into the same large tent he had ran out of earlier that morning. Nets were stretched a seemingly indiscriminate fashion all over the tent, as three men tossed a petite young woman from trapeze to trapeze, and another man and woman rode along the high wire on a tandem bicycle. There was a feeling of deep concentration, but also delight.
“They are happy to be free, as well as alive. We are very close here. Many of us are related by blood and have lost the same family in the Revolution. I cannot tell you much about us, but I trust you a little.”
“Will you ever go back to your country?” Cecil could not help asking.
“Perhaps we are a little like the children of Israel in Babylon; we weep for our lost city and our lost land. Maybe we hope God will bring us back, but we are not slaves, and we go where we choose, so perhaps it’s not so bad after all. I don’t know.”
“I think I am lost like you, in some ways,” said Cecil, not entirely sure what he was saying.
At first anger seemed to flash in her eyes at his presumption, then it softened into a deep sadness, almost pity. She said, “Perhaps you are in some ways. Unlike me, you can go home at any time. But that home does not seem to have anything for you. Maybe in time you will have something for that home, to give back and help it grow. Right now you need some growing up, I think.”
Cecil felt a little hurt at her last remark, and a little unsure about what the rest of what she said even meant.
Eight: In which a lot of time passes in very few words
Cecil stayed at the circus as they traveled through England. A year passed almost unnoticed by him; he was so busy learning new tricks and skills. Even under Katerina’s rather hard estimation he became rather accomplished on the trapeze. Another year passed and the magician took him on as an apprentice, and Cecil grew in his understanding of the something, the spirit of magic that had first drawn him to the circus. Over the next few years the circus traveled all over most of Europe, though they carefully avoided the places where there might be pockets of Bolshevik sympathy of the violent variety, so that limited their travel in a significant degree. In Paris, Katerina seemed to soften a bit towards him, and he began to consider the possibility of marriage. In Venice the possibility became a reality when she consented to accompany him on a gondola ride through the canals at sunset, and allowed him to kiss her under the bridge of sighs. They were married in Rome by an expatriate Russian Orthodox priest. A year after that Katerina gave birth to a beautiful girl-child with blue eyes and dark curls. When the girl was three years old the circus found themselves in Vienna, which was too close to Soviet Russia for the comfort of much of the company, but they were tight on funds and needed to perform somewhere. By this time, Katerina and Cecil had perfected a new trapeze act, for which they were quite famous. Cecil had yet to perform with the magician, though he continued to learn and grow in the art; he was not yet ready.
On the night of the Vienna opening, the circus felt slight apprehension due to rumors of pro-soviet sentiment in some of the population of the city. The magician had left that morning to meet an old friend living outside the city, and had still not returned as the opening hour approached.
Nine: In which it is finished
Cecil sent out a group of the circus’ more brawny men to look for sight or sound of the magician. He wanted to go with them, but he stayed to open the show with Katerina, who waited anxiously in her tent with their sleeping daughter, both for the show to start and for news of her father. She hoped one would take her mind of the other. He did not know what to say to her besides. “Maybe he will be okay.” And that did not seem worth saying at all, so he remained silent.
At seven o’clock he received word that the magician’s body had been found in the river. Cecil did not know how to tell his wife waiting in her tent. He walked slowly, entered silently and stood for a moment.
“I know,” she said, tears already streaming down her face catching the light of the candle, giving them the appearance of pure gold. “Come, we must carry on.”
She arose, leaving the child asleep, unknowing. They embraced each other; they embraced the pain. Their tears mingled with the paint on their faces. The show began as it had for years, and as it would for years to come.
