The contortionist laughed. “That’s a new one,” she said. “Well, you’d better come talk to Battina.”
The ringmistress of the Chauve-souris was helping the strong man unbolt the booth partitions and banquettes from the walls. There wasn’t a roustabout in sight.
“The runaway,” she said when she saw Lenka. “Hector, I need a drink.”
The strong man laughed and slotted the partition into a padded wooden crate. “Later,” he said.
Battina settled herself on a banquette, for all the world as if she hadn’t been lifting part of it a moment before. “You must call your parents,” she said severely.
Lenka shook her head. “I’m eighteen.”
“The police said you are sick.”
“I was sick. I’m better now. I need to live my own life, let them live theirs. They’re flyers. They need to fly.”
“What was wrong with you?” Hector asked.
“Cancer,” Lenka said shortly. “Leukemia.”
Battina and Hector exchanged unreadable looks.
“What do you want?” Battina asked, as if she didn’t much care.
Lenka’s heart beat harder.
“I want to come with you,” she said. “I know I’m not up to performing, but you look like you could use some crew. I can put up rigs, I can clean cages, I can handle props. And I’m good at front-of-house stuff. You don’t even have to pay me — not right away.” She felt her eyes prickle with rising tears. “Without the circus, I’m not really alive. Please. Let me come with you.”
Her voice broke. Disgusted, she fished in her shoulder bag for a Kleenex and blew her nose. “Sorry,” she said hoarsely. “That was unprofessional.”
“That was truth.” Battina tapped her teeth with her thumbnail. “I can’t deny we could use help — someone who understands American chinovniks, who can talk on the telephone, who can make plans.” She cocked a dark eye at Lenka. “Are you such a one?”
“I’ve never done it,” Lenka said truthfully. “But I can try.”
“Our manager we lost in New York,” Battina said. “He left us with big mess — papers, engagements in cities I have never heard of. I am artist, not telephone operator. You think you can fix?”
Lenka wanted to say she was an artist, too. But she wasn’t — not while she was sidelined. “Yes.”
Battina’s gaze shifted over Lenka’s shoulder. “What do you say?”
Lenka spun around to face the performers of the Cirque des Chauve-souris, who had gathered behind her so silently that she hadn’t even known they were there. Skin pasty under the work lights, they measured her with narrowed eyes.
The contortionist spoke. “I say we take her. It isn’t right for an artist to be stuck in one place.”
The equilibrist nodded gravely.
“Why not?” the ropewalker said. “Might be time for new blood.”
The sword swallower giggled. “Boris is right.”
The acrobats exchanged looks. “Can we trust her?” one of them asked.
Battina glanced at the strong man. “Hector?”
The strong man examined Lenka, his deep-set eyes glinting under the shadow of his heavy brow, then leaned toward her. Not sure what he was up to, Lenka stiffened but held her ground. He sniffed delicately at her hair, then straightened and nodded.
Just like that, she was in.
“In” is a relative term.
The snake girl’s name was Rima — “like the bird girl,” she explained, and then had to explain that it was the name of a character in an old book. Battina’s real name was Madam Oksana Valentinovna. The Vaulting Sokolovs were Evzen, Kazimir, and Dusan, the equilibrist was Cio-Cio, and the sword swallower was Carmen. The ropewalker said his name was Boris from Leningrad, but Lenka thought he sounded more like Bert from Idaho.
None of them was remotely interested in making friends.
In Lenka’s experience, all circus people were family. Even when they hardly had a language in common, they shared everything: war stories, opinions, meals, personal histories, shampoo, detergent.
The performers of the Cirque des Chauve-souris, not so much. They didn’t chat among themselves. They didn’t hang out, they didn’t even eat together. On the road from Cleveland to Columbus, Madam Oksana filled Lenka in on the terms of her engagement. Lenka must keep to the office truck, not only to work, but to sleep and eat. Lenka must watch the show from the front of the house, keeping an eye on the local bartender and ushers hired for each venue. Lenka must never, ever bother the performers. Practices were closed; the backyard was off-limits. If she objected to any of these conditions, she could go back to Cleveland.
Lenka gritted her teeth and agreed. Papa had told her about the hoops First of May circus virgins had to jump through, back in the old days. Jumping through hoops was better than going back to Cleveland.
Things Lenka learned in Columbus, Ohio:
Circuses need a lot of permits.
You can do almost anything if the support staff likes you.
Madam Oksana’s cats fed themselves.
In Lenka’s experience, animal acts were incredibly work intensive. Animals have to be groomed, fed, and watered, their cages cleaned, repaired, and hauled into place. A cat act should mean, at the very least, tiers of cat carriers stacked in the backyard and bags and bags of kitty litter and cat chow.
Not at the Cirque des Chauve-souris.
When they weren’t onstage, Madam Oksana’s cats were free to wander where they pleased. Lenka saw them lounging on coiled ropes, sleeping on banquettes, prowling the backyard, perched on the artists’ trailers. One night, she saw the big gray tom with a rat in his jaws, trotting toward the tent. A couple of nights later, she was about to climb into bed when she saw a young calico stretched luxuriously across her pillow. She scratched Lenka when Lenka tried to cuddle her, then licked the scratches penitently and settled down to spend the night in a furry coil by Lenka’s feet, purring like a boiling kettle.
Lenka had never had a cat of her own. And she was lonely. She shared her bed with one or another of Madam’s cats almost every night, ignoring their scratches and love nips even when she woke with a throbbing ear or nose, blood on her pillow, and a rough pink tongue busily licking her clean. It was a small price to pay for the company.
The second week in Columbus, the audience started to trickle away like coffee through a filter. People who liked highly produced glitz were bored. Even people who liked boutique circuses came once and didn’t return.
Madam Oksana didn’t seem to care.
“They do not appreciate true art,” she said. “The fashion now is crude humor, terrible music, costumes that show everything. It is the same in Europe. Still, we will contrive.”
Lenka cared very much.
“It wouldn’t kill you to buy new costumes. Hector’s bear suit is going to totally fall apart one of these days.”
Madam Oksana shrugged liquidly. “New costumes are expensive.”
“If you could attract better houses, you could afford them. Your open is flashy, and Rima and Hector’s act totally rocks. But the Vaulting Sokolovs are, like, stuck in the last century, and Cio-Cio’s routine is totally lame. Here.” She turned to her laptop, searched, and opened a YouTube video of a Cirque de Soleil equilibrist. “Look,” she said, turning the screen to Madam Oksana. “Cio-Cio could do that with her hands tied behind her.”
Madam Oksana watched the tiny blue-clad figure moving from backbend to handstand while balancing on a giant red ball. “The music is like dogs barking. And the ball is not dignified.”
Neither is walking on your hands, Lenka did not say. “The music’s negotiable. And it doesn’t have to be a ball. She could use a teeter-totter. Or a flexible pole. The point is, she needs more props. There’s only so far you can take a unicycle if you don’t juggle.”