No Stars at the Circus (8 page)

Papa looked embarrassed. “We’ll stand over there,” he said. He pointed towards the row of trees. “But the children can sit, thank you.”

Signor Corrado wiggled his eyebrows like a clown but Papa shook his head. “It would be best for everybody if we did that,” he said. “But thank you, again.”

Mama looked a bit sad about the seats but then she kissed us and pushed us forward. “Enjoy the show!” she said. “We’ll just walk about. Forget about us, we’ll be fine.”

Then I saw La Giaconda standing in the doorway of the caravan. She was wearing a black dress made of net and her long curly hair was loose over her shoulders. She gave me a big wave.

“Welcome, Jonas!” she called. “You’re in for a treat today.”

I made Nadia sit down in the front row and then I went over to La Giaconda to tell her it was my sister’s birthday. Well, why not?

The seats filled up pretty quickly but Nadia and I definitely had the best ones. She was breathing fast, as if she’d been running, she was so excited.

I kept looking round to make sure there were no soldiers hanging around. They can go to anything they want to in Paris. Which isn’t fair because they have special free cinemas of their own, and eating places just for them where they can get all kinds of food. Even steaks. But there weren’t any soldiers there.

There were a couple of policemen patrolling the street behind the vans, but they didn’t come over. They’d probably seen the show a few times.

Signor Corrado set up a wire between two poles. Then he began to fit a lot of stripy poles together, one into another, so it made a really long pole. It looked even longer than the ones knights used to joust with from their horses.

When the pole was ready La Giaconda came out of the van holding a little accordion. She played a really sad song, just a few bars. Signor Corrado looked as if he was crying but that was because he had tears painted under his eyes. He was wearing the same Pierrot costume as he had on the day I saw him first.

Then she began a fast funny tune, and before we could even see him do it Signor Corrado had bounced up onto the wire and was walking on it, holding the long pole. It reached nearly as far as our seats.

First he walked, and then he ran because the music was getting faster and faster. In the end he was really sliding across, as if the wire was the skinniest piece of ice ever. Then he did the splits on it. Ouch!

We all clapped when he jumped down and rolled over in a somersault.

He bowed and said, “Welcome,” to everybody.

“One day, my good friends, my family will have our Big Top again and when you come you’ll see me and all the other artists working with a proper trapeze and a proper high wire, just like in the old days.” He pretended to wipe away his tears.

Then La Giaconda sat down in a velvet armchair. She said that she was La Giaconda, the muse of the great artist Leonardo da Vinci. Signor Corrado signalled for all of us to clap.

“I have special powers given to me by direct line from none other than the lovely Mona Lisa herself,” she said. “La Giaconda. Another Italian guest living in your beautiful city.”

“Not any more, she’s not!” someone shouted. “She’s run away, like you!”

La Giaconda got pink in her cheeks.

“Good French people are keeping her safe,” she said. “Thank you.”

Some people at the back began to laugh so I turned round and glared but they probably didn’t see me. Anyway, they stopped when La Giaconda said she could read people’s minds. She wagged her finger like a teacher.

“So all of you should be very careful what you’re thinking!”

And then, before I could see it coming, she pointed at Nadia and called her over. She patted her lap as if that was where Nadia should sit.

She said, “I’m going to test my powers on this lovely young girl. I swear to you I have never set eyes on her before this day.”

That was true, I knew, but still, I’d just told her about Nadia’s birthday. I really,
really
didn’t want La Giaconda to make my sister look silly in any way. Don’t forget, Nadia is deaf. And she can be shy with new people.

But guess what, Nadia didn’t mind! She just sprang out of her seat. I looked round to see if Mama and Papa were watching. I couldn’t see them but it was too late to do anything about it. There was my sister, right up there, sitting on La Giaconda’s lap.

La Giaconda put her hands on Nadia’s head.

“This is a very talented young lady,” she said. “Artistic too. I’ll bet she runs a theatrical establishment of her very own. Isn’t that right?”

I nearly whooped out loud. How could La Giaconda know about Nadia’s theatre? I hadn’t said anything about
that
.

But there was a problem. Nadia wasn’t facing La Giaconda, so she wasn’t able to read her lips. She probably didn’t even know there’d been a question. And she wasn’t looking at me, making mad signs at her to look behind.

Then something amazing happened. Nadia turned round and said to La Giaconda, “Will you say that again, please? I didn’t catch what you said.”

My sister was so smart! She’d said just the right thing, so La Giaconda asked her question about the theatre again.

Nadia blushed red. “Yes, I’ve got a puppet theatre, with kings and queens and a Puss in Boots.”

She forgot to say d’Artagnan.

Then La Giaconda said, “But you don’t have this one.”

She opened her hand. Everybody except those in the front row had to stretch their necks to see what she had in it. We could see it really well. It was a tiny wooden puppet, a marionette with yellow strings, wearing a beautiful Pierrot costume. It looked exactly like Signor Corrado.

La Giaconda made it walk in the air and do the splits just like him.

“This is for you, Nadia,” she said. She looked at the audience, row by row. “My muse, the famous lady in the painting, has just let me know that today is your birthday and you are eight years of age.”

That was another weird thing. I hadn’t told La Giaconda Nadia’s age so I don’t know how she got
that
right, as Nadia is so small. But she did.

One girl behind us started to cry, I suppose she was jealous about the puppet, but everybody else clapped and cheered. Then Signor Corrado made everybody sing “Happy Birthday” and he bowed Nadia back into her seat, clapping away himself. Her face was bright pink but really happy, you could see that, and she had the puppet held tight in her hands.

I was a bit jealous too, but I knew that puppet was the best present Nadia would ever get in her whole entire life.

“Now put your hands together for Madame Fifi and her canny canines!”

Signor Corrado started the clapping again.

Madame Fifi came out of the yellow van. She bowed. She had a set of red buckets held up against her chest and a big silver hoop looped around her neck. She was small and fat but you should have heard the whistle she made. Even Georges Leclercq couldn’t do better, and he was the best whistler in our school.

The old woman sitting beside me started to shake when the poodles came out after the whistle and began to do their tricks. She was trying not to laugh but that was impossible because the dogs kept falling off the buckets. Or else they pushed them over and stuck their heads inside. One wore his bucket like a hat and he kept bumping into the others because he couldn’t see. Only one of the dogs made it through the hoop properly. The others just stuck their heads through it and shook themselves and turned away as if they were saying, “Thanks but no thanks.” Everyone was laughing at them. I looked towards the trees again and this time I saw Papa. He was laughing too!

Afterwards I found out that Madame Fifi’s dogs were really clown dogs. They were supposed to make us laugh, not do everything right. But one thing they were all really good at was walking on their hind legs. That reminded me of Jean-Paul’s dog, Whistle, and I wondered where he was. Somewhere in France, I suppose. Unless the Germans carried him off back to Germany to give to Hitler as a spoil of war.

Then Signor Corrado came back. He said he had a special treat but people would have to make a proper queue like a shop queue and come up close, one at a time, to see it.

“Because, ladies and gentlemen, this is a very tiny piece of genuine magic.”

Everyone groaned but they weren’t cross, not really, you could tell. Signor Corrado pointed at me.

“I’ll need my young friend from the front row. He can act as my adjutant.”

I didn’t know what that meant but later I found out Signor Corrado liked to use strange words when he was performing. Adjutant means a kind of helper.

Anyway,
that
is how I got to see the best part of the show really close up, and for all the time it lasted, not like everybody else who had only a minute or so to look.

Signor Corrado went back into the van and brought out a tiny theatre. It wasn’t like Nadia’s, it was more like the puppet theatre in the Luxembourg Gardens, because it had legs. Only it was much smaller and not as brightly painted. The top came up as high as his chest.

Then he brought out a yellow suitcase with labels stuck all over it. They said
MOSCOW
and
VIENNA
and
COPENHAGEN
and
ROME
and some other places.

He gave the suitcase to me and said really loudly, “On no account open those clasps, young man. I’m not responsible for what happens if you do.”

I had no idea what was in the case but it was very,
very
light. I thought it might be full of small balloons that would float off. Or flat ones I’d have to blow up. Or else maybe stink bombs that might explode when they felt the air.

But it wasn’t any of those.

When he had the theatre set up right with its little platform sticking out in front, Signor Corrado told me to put the suitcase down on the platform, facing out to the audience.

“Do
not
go near the clasps!” he said. “Only I, Luigi Corrado, can deal with the menace that lurks inside this case.”

I could hear people whispering down in the rows of chairs. Someone shouted that he was itchy already, but everyone else shushed him.

Then La Giaconda appeared from behind the caravan with a long wooden flute and began to play the strangest tune you ever heard. It was as if she was calling something out of a magic forest. I’d never heard a sound like it before. As she played, the lid of the suitcase began to rise, even though Signor Corrado was standing well away and had his hands down by his sides.

I could see everything because I was so close.

The lid went up. It was lined with golden shiny material and so was the bottom part, which was raised level with the rim of the suitcase. There were four tiny Roman chariots lined up at one end. A wall divided the middle of the ring but there was space at both ends. The wall had ancient Romans painted onto it, some in togas, some with helmets. I think it was meant to be the Colosseum.

Two of the chariots were shifting a bit as if they wanted to start racing but I couldn’t figure out how they were doing it. Nobody was touching anything and there were no wires that I could see.

Then Signor Corrado pointed to the people in the front row and told them to come up. When they got close he moved forward and tapped underneath the platform. All the chariots took off! One of them got right ahead and went round the middle at a lick but then it bumped itself over and was passed by the others.

I kept looking at the crashed one because right away I could see the tiny, tiny legs. There really was something pulling the chariots along!

It was a real live flea circus. I’d read about them in my comics.

La Giaconda stopped playing. She came forward and used her flute to move people into two lines and after they’d had their look at the chariots racing she pointed them back to their seats. Mostly they said nothing much. One boy asked if he could hold one of the chariots on his arm like he did last year but Signor Corrado smiled and shook his head.

The man who’d said he was itchy started scratching really hard when he came up. It was the fifth time the chariots were going round. I knew the man was just stupid but it was making me itchy just to see him scratch. He had pimply skin all over his arms.

But Signor Corrado was able to deal with him. He spoke in a very loud voice so everybody could hear. He said the man should show some respect for the rare art of the flea circus.

“Because, ladies and gentlemen, these tiny patriotic French animals are straining their hearts and their extraordinary leg muscles to give pleasure in a grey and cold world.”

I remember his words perfectly. Because it was right then that I decided I would have a flea circus of my own. Anyone could get fleas. They weren’t rare, like lions. I just needed to learn how to train them. When I got good at it I’d be able to earn a bit of money and we could buy some nice things on the black market. Then Papa wouldn’t have to sell any more watches.

The show was nearly finished. Signor Corrado lowered the lid of the suitcase and told me I could sit down. La Giaconda came out of the caravan holding a cowboy’s hat and started to go between the lines, collecting money.

The last act was Alfredo. He slinked out of the van wearing a kind of ballet costume for men. He was Signor Corrado’s nephew, but this was the first time I’d seen him. He was very thin, especially his face and his legs, but he had as much hair on his head as a lion, except it was greased back.

He juggled with balls and then with some pretend swords, and Signor Corrado played the organ. Every time Alfredo dropped something Signor Corrado played a bad chord. It was clever because people didn’t know whether to boo or not. They thought maybe Alfredo was a clown, like the poodles.

But in the end some of them booed anyway. Then the noise behind us got really loud. The man who’d been causing the flea trouble stood up and pointed at where Mama and Papa were, under the trees. He shouted out, really loud.

“What about them, over there? Why do the likes of them get to stand there and look for free when we have to pay? Don’t tell me
they’re
patriotic Frenchmen! We know what they are!”