Entwined (6 page)

Ruda glared at her husband.

"Get the old ones back, Luis, and get them by tonight!"

His eyes became shifty; he hated to be spoken to in that way in front of the workers. "I said I sold them. Just work through the act, they'll get used to them. I can't get them back from Paris in time for the opening."

Ruda kicked one of the plinths in fury. "Just do what I ask, Jesus Christ! It was the only thing you had to do and you fouled it up!"

Luis began to pick his teeth with a matchstick. "I'll call around. What time do you rehearse?"

Ruda was walking out of the tent. Over her shoulder she shouted for him to check the board. Luis noted they were not on until later that afternoon, so he joined a group of men going off to the canteen.

Alone in the trailer, Ruda paced up and down. She opened the safe, counted the money kept for emergencies, and noted that Luis must have been dipping into it. She slammed the safe closed. There were about fifteen thousand dollars left. She then checked her own bank balance. In her private account she had fifty-two thousand dollars. She rubbed her scar until it pained her, then began to open drawers in her dressing table, feeling under her clothes for the small bundles of dollars she kept for minor emergencies. Like a squirrel she hid small stacks of notes in various currencies and denominations, but no matter how she searched and calculated, she did not have one hundred thousand. The more she mentally added up the amount, the more her fury built. This was hers, every single hard-earned cent was hers, and that little bastard felt he had a right to it.

The cashiers said they could give Ruda an advance on her salary, but not until after lunch when they would go to the bank. Grimaldi would have to sign the release form, but if she came back at three they would have the money in dollars as she had requested. Ruda smiled, and shrugged, then said she'd changed her mind. She was smarting with the thought that she needed Grimaldi's signature for an advance on her own wages.

Ruda fixed herself a salad in the trailer, and then changed into her practice clothes. She was just about to leave when Luis returned. He shook his head, his hair soaked. "It's really coming down, maybe going to be a storm. The forecast isn't good."

"Did you try and sort out the pedestals?"

Luis had totally forgotten. He nodded, and then lied, saying he expected a return call at the main box office. She watched him in moody silence as he unlocked the wooden bench seat and checked over his guns; he rarely had a gun when watching out for her, but it was a habit from the past when his watchers had always been armed. Out of habit he checked his rifles, but never took them out of the box.

"I'll need you in the arena. Can you get the boys ready? We're due to start in an hour."

Luis sat on the bench, picked up the towel Ruda had used to dry her hair and rubbed his head. "Ruda, we need to talk, maybe after rehearsal."

Ruda was already at the trailer door.

"Which tart was it today?"

Luis laughed, tossing the towel aside. "It's been the same one for months and you know it—it's Tina, she's one of the bareback riders."

"You'll be screwing them in their diapers soon, you old goat."

Luis laughed again; he had a lovely rumbling laugh, and it relieved her: Maybe it wasn't as serious as she had thought.

"See you in the ring then! After, we can go out for dinner someplace."

Ruda paused by the door. "Maybe, but I've got a lot to do, we'll see."

He gave a rueful smile. "I'm sorry about the mixup with the plinths, I'll get onto them and see you in the ring."

The door clicked shut after her, and Luis lifted his feet up onto the bench, his elbows behind his head, and stared at the photographs along the top of the wall. Some of them were brown with age. They were of him in his prime, standing with his lions, smiling to the camera; there was such a powerful look to him, such youthfulness…Slowly his eyes drifted down, he watched himself age from one poster to the next; it was as if his entire life was pasted up in front of him. He stared at the central poster, Ruda's face where his had always been. The side wall was filled with Ruda. He eased his feet down and stood, slowly moving toward the pictures that showed he was a has-been.

He opened a bottle of scotch, drank from the bottle, and looked at a photograph brown and curling with age. The Grimaldi family. There was the old man, the grandfather, his own father, with Luis beside him no more than ten years old. Luis's father had taught him everything he knew, just as his father had done before him. Three generations of big game trainers.

Luis downed more scotch as he stripped to shower. He bent to look at himself in the bathroom mirror, staring at the scars across his arms—warrior scars his papa used to call them—scars from breaking up the tiger fights. But there was one, deeper than the others, a jagged line from the nape of his neck to his groin. His fingers traced it, and he started to sweat, as his mouth dried up. He could never go back into the ring. She had done that to him. Ruda had made him feel inadequate, but it had been Mamon, her favorite baby, that had almost killed him.

The cold shower eased the feverish sweats, and he soaped his chest. He had been mauled so many times; how often had he stepped between two massive tigers, more afraid they would hurt themselves than him? Only the terrible scar on his chest made the fear rise up from his belly.

Mamon had lunged at him, dragged him like a rag doll around the practice ring, and Luis had been overcome with a terror he had not believed himself capable of. It had frozen him. He had no memory of how he had been dragged from the arena, no memory of anything until he woke in the hospital, with the wound already filling with poison, a nightmare wound that opened with pus every time he moved. The anguish and the pain had kept him feverish for weeks. In his dreams the scar opened and oozed and suffocated him.

Luis Grimaldi had almost died. To be incapacitated physically was hard enough for him to deal with, but harder still was the relentless fear. A fear that he could tell to no one. At first he had tried hiding it, making excuses, so many excuses, why months after he was healed, he had still not been near his cats. It was during those months that Ruda had begun working solo. He had said that he wasn't fit enough, that he needed more time to regain his strength. But Ruda knew he was afraid. Ruda had encouraged him—half-heartedly, he realized now—because she didn't want him back in the ring, she wanted the act for herself.

The bottle was almost empty, and the drunker he became, the more embittered he felt. He did not consider to what lengths Ruda had gone to salvage the act, how she had worked herself to exhaustion, keeping him and his cats at their winter quarters. Luis had forgotten that he never lifted a hand to help her, never asked how she had managed to finance them. All he could recall was her humiliation of him.

It was all Mamon's fault, he had decided. He could not get back into training with a cat that had mauled him, a cat that no longer showed him respect. Luis had entered the arena, and a cold sweat had drenched his body. He felt it as if it were yesterday, the terrible fear as Mamon's cage was drawn closer to the gate. A number of people at the winter quarters had gathered to watch. They came to see the famous man face his attempted killer, and they stood in silence as the cage drew closer and closer.

Mamon was motionless, his head lowered, staring at Grimaldi. Ruda had spoken calmly, softly, asking Grimaldi when she should release the cat. Grimaldi took another gulp of scotch as the heat of his humiliation made him shake.

Alone in the arena, he could not stop his legs from trembling, his breath felt tight in his chest. He looked from Mamon to Ruda. He wanted more than anything to give her the signal. But he froze, and she kept on watching him, her eyes like the cat's, and she was smiling. It was her mocking smile that finished him. The great Grimaldi walked out of the arena and back to their quarters. That moment finished his career.

He began to cry as he remembered the way she had held him close, later that night. He recalled every word she had said.

"It's not the scar on your body, Luis, but the ones inside; they are always worse. I understand more than anyone else, I understand."

Luis had pushed her away from him then, shouting that she did not understand, there was nothing wrong with his mind, and he had pulled his shirt open to display the raw, ragged scar. Mamon, he said, was dangerous, should be shot. He had then tried to get his gun, pushing Ruda out of his way. Ruda's physical strength had stunned him, she had almost lifted him off his feet with a backhanded slap that sent him sprawling. Standing over him, her eyes as crazy as a wild cat's, she had virtually spat out the words.

"You touch Mamon, and I swear to God I'll kill you!"

Luis had dragged himself to his feet. "You shoot him then, it's him or me, Ruda."

Ruda had taken his whip, the whip Luis's grandfather had used, and, for a second, he thought she was going to use it on him. Instead, she laughed in his face.

"Watch me! Just watch me, Luis."

From the trailer window, he had seen her stride to the practice arena. Luis heard her shrill voice instruct the old hand who had been with Grimaldi for thirty years, heard her give the order for Mamon to be released into the arena.

Ruda had wheeled the old, well-worn plinths into the center of the ring, and then stood waiting, hands on her hips. The massive lion moved slowly and cautiously through the makeshift barrier tunnel from his open cage. Luis inched open the window to hear her. Her voice rang out, a high pitched call: "Mamawwwwwwwwww, Mamawwwww UP…YUP YUP…Mamon…come on, angel…good boy mama's angel."

Mamon swung his massive black-maned head from side to side and then, to Luis's astonishment, reared up onto his hind legs and walked toward Ruda, his front paws swung toward her. He kept on walking toward her and then, as she called out to the animal, he turned, as if dancing for her. Her high-pitched voice called out a rolling 'Rr' sound—"REH! rey, REH…REH…"—and then Mamon jumped onto the red plinth. After steadying himself, he cautiously tested the plank, a thick wooden board balanced between the two plinths. Carefully, cautiously, right front paw patting the plank, he still balanced himself, and she now called: "HUPPPPPPPPPPPP! BLUE…BLUE…M'angel!"

The animal trod the narrow board toward the blue-based plinth. He eased himself into a sitting position, his thick tail trailing the ground as he perched.

Ruda moved closer and closer to the blue plinth, until she was close enough to be within the lion's territory. Only another trainer would know this was, in actual fact, reasonably safe. The animal sitting on the plinth, needing all four paws to give him balance, is unlikely or unable to attack, his hind quarters overhanging due to the position of his tail. If he attacked from a seated position, he would automatically lose his balance.

Luis couldn't take his eyes off Ruda as she moved in close, and then audaciously turned—leaving her back within a half foot of the animal. She never stopped talking, whispering encouragement, as she then knelt down on one knee, her head beneath the massive cat's.

Ruda gave a high-pitched command: "UP… UP… GREEeee GREEEE…" The green-based plinth was five feet in front of her.

She was encouraging him to leap from one pedestal to another, from the red to the green.

Mamon lifted his front paws and balanced himself on his hind legs on the pedestal. All his muscles strained as he made a flying jump, right over Ruda's head, onto the green pedestal.

She ran to him and gave him a tidbit, rubbing his nose. She then looked to the trailer window with a small, tight smile on her face. Finally she lifted both her arms, giving the final command for Mamon to head out of the arena.

Ruda gave a mocking bow to the small group of onlookers who applauded her, as Luis slunk away from the trailer window.

The word spread fast that the great Luis Grimaldi had lost his nerve. They joked that his wife had taken it from him.

♦ ♦ ♦

Grimaldi staggered slightly as he left the trailer now. The rain had not ceased and the ground was muddy. He made his way toward the rehearsal tent. The cashier who had talked with Ruda earlier that morning called out to him. He turned bleary-eyed toward her large brown umbrella.

"I can give you the advance, Mr. Grimaldi, if you come over and sign for it." Luis had not the slightest idea what she was talking about, and stumbled over to her.

"Your wife w T anted an advance on your salary. If you need it, I've come back from the bank, I just require your signature."

Grimaldi mumbled incoherently, and she passed on, turning to see him slither and slide against one of the trailers. The cashier shrugged, disinterested; his drinking problem was well known.

The big man mumbled to himself. Not content with taking over his act, Ruda was trying to steal his money! He was going to face her, and nothing was going to stop him.

♦ ♦ ♦

Ruda had made the boys dismantle the cage arena twice, and re-erect it. She timed them to the last second, and even bolted and heaved two of the walls herself; the whole operation was to take less than two minutes. This was tough going, the arena cage was very heavy and unwieldy, the tunnel sections even heavier. As they took it all apart for the third time, they moaned and muttered to one another, out of "Madame Grimaldi's" earshot.

Mike asked if they were to use the new pedestals, stacked outside the ring. Ruda pursed her lips and shook her head. "No, I'll do that first thing in the morning when I'm fresh. Let's just do the easy routine today, give them some exercise, and tomorrow we'll have a real crack at it. So for now, it's the herd, then the leap, followed by the roller roll."

Ruda called up to the electrician. "Can you give me a few spotlights, in the usual places, just to keep them on their toes, red, green, and blue formation?"

A voice answered that he would rather have it be on her toes than his! A few spots came on and off. Ruda shaded her eyes, calling out to the technician again.