The Vanishing Act (9 page)

Uncle shook his head. ‘I don’t think I am quite up to it, dear Minou.’

‘Cosmina didn’t like the snake either,’ said Boxman. ‘She said it reminded her of Russia.’

‘Cosmina is Boxman’s great love,’ I explained to Uncle. ‘She has red hair like Mama.’

‘And where is the charming young lady?’ asked Uncle.

‘She is gazing at stars in the Himalayas,’ said Boxman. ‘She doesn’t need to be rescued anymore.’

‘She sounds like a wonderful young woman,’ replied Uncle. ‘Full of initiative.’

Uncle kept looking nervously towards the apothecary’s desk even after Boxman had put the snake back in the drawer. He didn’t relax until we left the barn and were on our way to the church.

Priest was excited to have visitors. After greeting us, he left us waiting on the doorstep so he could get changed into the violet robe he wore on special occasions or when he needed a bit of cheering up.

I wanted to talk with Uncle about Mama, but when Priest returned in his violet robe he began to tell Uncle all about Theodora and the frescoes. When
Uncle saw the stained glass window he exclaimed that Theodora looked distinctly like Descartes’ father.

‘He had the same determined look in his eyes,’ he said. ‘I wonder if there is a connection. Wouldn’t that be brilliant, Minou, if there was?’

I told him that No Name was scared of the black dog in the row of angels.

‘I am too,’ said Uncle. ‘Look at those teeth.’

Priest and Uncle talked for a long time and Uncle ate three large pretzels. But finally Uncle shook Priest’s hand and asked me to show him Mama’s shoe grave.

This was my chance.

‘She is not there,’ I said. ‘It’s only her shoe. And Peacock of course.’

Then I proceeded to tell Uncle, step by step, as logically as I could, my argument for Mama still being alive. When we got close to her shoe grave, I showed him my notebook and told him that there was no reason to pay attention to a shoe that Mama could have lost in any number of ways. I also showed him my sketch of Peacock’s skeleton. Uncle looked at the sketch and listened to all I had to say.

Encouraged, I told him about the sunken city
and of the octopus that had jumped straight from the scales. And I told him about the man from one of Boxman’s magazines, who was eaten by a boa constrictor and rescued by one long cut of a Swiss army knife, just when he could hold his breath no longer. There was a picture of him throwing an omelette into the air like a professional chef. His cat was in the photo, too, sitting on the kitchen bench, looking sceptically at the midair omelette.

I reminded Uncle that Descartes would have closed his eyes and said, ‘Let me think about it for a bit longer. It is only my thoughts that count, not a shoe.’

And as I spoke it felt like Mama was about to arrive home at any moment.

When we reached the grave Uncle asked, with a kind but sad expression in his eyes, ‘Where would she have gone, Minou?’

And I couldn’t answer.

Then he took off his bowler hat, bowed his head, and looked mournful. And it was clear that Uncle wasn’t going to help me convince anyone that Mama was alive.

How surprised they would all be when she walked in the door and wanted her shoe back. She
would laugh and say, ‘But I am not dead, how silly.’

Mama would know straight away what the dead boy’s postcard meant. She would say, in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘Yes, Minou, I too have a skeleton bird inside of me. Everyone does.’ And she would tell me how a freight ship had picked her up the day she left the house with Turtle and her large black umbrella. ‘Can you believe it?’ she would say. ‘They were going to China too.’

She would laugh again and describe the ship in great detail, from the enormous chimney billowing black smoke, to the load of colourful silk blankets stacked from floor to ceiling on the lowest deck where she shared a cabin with a snake charmer. She would tell me how she had slept with one eye open, watching the snake basket. The snake wanted to dance every time it heard the foghorn, so it was most important for her to stay alert.

I put the postcard back in my pocket, and placed the atlas next to my orange scarf. I was hungry. The delivery boat was coming in the morning and I needed to wake Papa if he hadn’t already started dinner.

Papa had kept up Mama’s tradition after she disappeared. She used to cook for everybody on
the island the night before the delivery boat came. One joy should never arrive alone, she said, as she sent me off down the forest path, delivering bowls of steaming food to Priest and Boxman. Mama liked to experiment, and Boxman used to say that her cooking marked the most interesting day of the week. But he didn’t always like the food, and a few times Mama’s chocolate fish fillets ended up in No Name’s bowl.

Papa, on the other hand, could only make two dishes and, even though we all liked fried fish and pancakes, it wasn’t as exciting as it used to be.

I left the lighthouse. It was getting very cold outside and my breath turned to mist as I walked down the stairs. But it was just as cold in the kitchen. The fire still hadn’t been lit and Papa wasn’t cooking dinner. I could hear him in the blue room, talking softly, but there was something about his voice that didn’t sound right. I tiptoed close and listened at the door.

‘Dear boy,’ I heard him say, ‘I can’t work it out. Is the beginning in your gold button, or in your foot? Or is it somewhere else?’ Papa seemed to swallow a sob. ‘Oh, dear boy, I wish you could tell me.’

S
uddenly I felt hungry and terribly cold. The orange smell seemed far too sweet, and I missed Mama. I missed the way she used to be busy at the stove, her red hair tied up, her pale face flushed from the heat. I missed the way her dress used to move, back and forth, like music, as she cooked for us.

I got the last biscuit out of the jar, and tried to imagine what Mama might have done to make everything feel better. And I remembered the French song she sang at the circus.

I went and stood in the middle of the kitchen, cleared my throat, and began to sing. The words were in French and I didn’t understand what they meant, but I thought that I pronounced them right. I
had listened to Mama sing it many times during our rehearsals.

By the third verse the room started to feel nicer. I could almost hear Mama say, ‘See, Minou, bring a little joy into the house and everything feels different. It’s like magic.’ And it was true, even the apples that she had painted next to the shoe rack seemed brighter.

Mama’s song was only a small part of the circus. We had been practising our tricks for weeks and when the night of the performance arrived I was sitting on the bed, watching Mama put up her hair. She was wearing an olive dress that looked beautiful against her hair. Her red suitcase sat next to me, packed and ready, filled with costumes. The old cookie tin was open and Mama’s flowers were spread out on the dressing table. There was a red, white, yellow, green and a pale blue one.

‘This would look beautiful against your black hair.’ Mama held up the pale blue flower.

I shook my head, ‘I don’t like things in my hair, Mama.’ I crossed my legs on the bed and looked at the suitcase. ‘It’s as if we are going to the other side of the world,’ I said, tracing the locks on the suitcase,
thinking they looked like No Name’s ears when he went flying through the burning hoop in the yard at night.

She smiled. ‘The other side of the world is far away.’

‘Boxman has a second heart,’ I said.

‘A second heart?’ Mama decided on a white flower shaped like a lily.

‘On his chest.’

‘Not an apple?’

‘No,’ I said bewildered.

‘Not a pear?’ Mama was smiling. ‘Or a suitcase?’ She fastened the flower behind her ear.

‘No, don’t be silly Mama.’

She looked at her reflection in the mirror. ‘To have a second heart would be a wonderful thing. You could receive visitors at any time, with no notice at all.’

‘You don’t have visitors in your heart,’ I protested.

‘Oh, but you do,’ she insisted, a hairpin between her teeth, ‘and if you had a second heart you could say, “Come in, my heart is nice and pure.”’

I didn’t think she made much sense.

‘Like yours, little one, or mine, when I was younger …’

‘What was it like when you were younger, Mama?’

But Mama was already putting on her shoes and didn’t seem to hear my question. ‘We should leave, Minou. Boxman has been working in the barn all day, he needs our help.’

The rain had been falling silently, and the path was wet and slippery. We walked through the dark forest, dragging the red suitcase between us. Mama lifted up her dress to avoid the puddles, and she laughed when we almost slipped and had to cling to each other to keep our balance.

‘Little one,’ she said, ‘this is going to be a night we will never forget, I can feel it.’

Just before we reached Boxman’s yard we saw lights, hundreds of them, running along the barn, reflected in the wet courtyard.

‘It all looks so magical,’ exclaimed Mama as we entered the barn.

The stage was fringed with pine branches and a great big mirror was leaning against the back wall for costume changes. A heavy velvety curtain in a brilliant green hung at the side of the barn, ready to be pulled across the stage. Candles were lit everywhere, some alarmingly close to the hay bales. But
Boxman had assured me that nothing would catch fire and that he would place a bucket of water in each corner just in case.

There were six rows of chairs with different coloured cushions, and streamers that stretched from one end of the barn to the other. Boxman wore a slim pinstriped suit with green socks and pointy shoes, and his hair was brushed and hanging loose. He bowed gallantly, kissed Mama’s hand and then mine.

‘You are not wearing a cape today,’ I said.

‘No,’ he answered, ‘today is special.’

Mama sent me behind the curtain to get changed. I stood, shivering in my underwear, while she looked for my clown jacket in the suitcase. No Name, who was wearing his new brown cardigan, came up to say hello. The cardigan was the first I had ever made. It was a bit tight around his belly, stretching the buttonholes, but I thought I had done a good job and No Name looked pleased with it.

It was only when I had put on the clown jacket and Mama had painted my cheeks red that I realised I had left my clown shoes at home. Boxman said not to worry. He went to the apothecary’s desk and pulled a pair of huge white shoes from a tiny drawer.

‘These were worn by Bukowski, the great Hungarian clown,’ he said. ‘He wore them at his infamous performance in Warsaw.’

‘Why was it infamous?’ I asked.

‘He had a new-found passion for tightrope walking and didn’t care about falling anymore. He cared for falling in love. That night he walked the tightrope dressed in pink, matching his trapeze girlfriend, Frida the Quick. He didn’t fall once and the people of Warsaw never forgave him.’

I tied the laces twice around my ankles to keep them on, but was still about to walk out of the huge white shoes every time I took a step. I went up and down the rows of chairs practising, while Mama did singing exercises in the corner and Boxman stood on a ladder trying to attach a bright stage light to a wooden beam.

‘Why do we need so many chairs?’ I asked.

‘You should always expect more people,’ said Boxman from the ladder. ‘“Expect surprises,” my old ringmaster used to say, “it will keep you on your toes.”’

It was almost as if we were in a real circus and people were queuing up outside, and elephants were waiting to perform, snorting and rocking the way Boxman said they did just before going on stage.

Mama stopped her singing exercises. ‘I shouldn’t be doing this,’ she said to Boxman. ‘This is a circus not a theatre. Who wants to hear me sing?’

‘I do,’ I said.

But Mama ignored me. ‘I should have just assisted you,’ she said to Boxman. ‘Why did I want to do something on my own? What a stupid idea.’

But Boxman assured her that her singing would make it a circus like no other and that it was normal to be nervous. ‘Take some deep breaths,’ he said.

Mama was assisting Boxman in his box trick. She was also supposed to help him with No Name’s fire jumping, but had changed her mind. She didn’t want to let me help either, even though it was difficult for Boxman to yell and hold the hoop at the same time.

Mama used to hold No Name’s hoops while Boxman was yelling, but it all went wrong when Boxman added fire to the hoops. No Name didn’t like it much. And during a rehearsal a few weeks before the performance he ran away howling and hid in the barn.

‘This is cruel,’ said Mama in a shrill voice and threw the burning hoop on the ground. It hissed in the snow, leaving dark petrol-coloured marks.

Boxman stood still. Only his cape moved in the wind. Then he waved his finger at Mama. ‘You think you know about animals,’ he said. ‘But you don’t. Because of you No Name will think he is a failure.’

Mama didn’t listen. She walked up to Boxman, swiftly took his finger in her mouth and bit him hard. Boxman said nothing, even though it must have hurt. He turned and followed No Name into the barn, his footsteps dumb in the snow.

‘Come,’ said Mama, pulling me off the bale of hay, where I had been audience to No Name’s rehearsal. She walked briskly ahead, pulling me down the forest path. Her dress took on a life of its own, brushing over Boxman’s cabbages, pale and green, sticking out of the snow.

I didn’t understand Mama’s smile when she undressed in our kitchen, stripping down to her silk underwear. Her white legs were luminous as she turned in front of the fire.

‘It’s cold,’ she said to Papa, when he came in and saw her standing there. Then she laughed. And Papa and I, we couldn’t help it, we laughed too.

But that was the lead-up. The hour had arrived.

‘I am still nervous,’ Mama said, after she had been breathing deeply for a while.

‘Don’t be nervous, you are magnificent,’ said Boxman from the ladder. ‘And you look wonderful with the flower in your hair.’

‘Okay,’ she said, ‘okay.’ She took another breath, walked to the middle of the stage and, with the voice of a ringmaster exclaimed, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is going to be an extraordinary performance.’

‘Yes!’ shouted Boxman, wobbling dangerously on the ladder.

‘People will talk about it for years to come. How the magnificent three—’

‘Four,’ I interrupted, pointing to No Name who was sniffing the pine branches.

‘Four,’ repeated Mama. ‘People will ask far into the future, “Where are they now? What are they doing?” And people will say, “Remember that little girl with the raven hair and the big white shoes?” Everyone will—’

‘But Mama,’ I interrupted again, ‘it’s only Papa and Priest.’

She nodded, ‘That’s true, but—’

‘And where is Papa going to sit?’ I asked.

Mama stopped being a ringmaster and said in
her normal voice, ‘There is plenty of space, Minou; six rows of chairs.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but he doesn’t like to choose.’

Papa arrived, damp but handsome in his suit and bowtie. He smiled and waved, but stopped when he saw the rows of chairs.

I ran towards him as fast as I could in Bukowski’s shoes, searching for a good seat. I saw one that looked nice, right in the middle of the second row with a gold pillow on it. I went and took his hand. ‘This one is for you, Papa,’ I said.

‘Thank you, my girl. Thank you,’ he said again, accidentally stepping on my big shoes.

Priest arrived, wearing his violet robe, holding an umbrella and a bouquet of tulips in one hand and a plate of pretzels in the other. He glided onto the chair next to Papa, and I could hear him tell Papa how he had seen all the lights in Boxman’s yard from the church tower as he got changed into his robe.

‘A guiding light,’ he exclaimed. ‘Such a welcome.’

A silence fell over the barn. Boxman folded up the ladder, put on his top hat and went to the centre of the stage. He started out in a quiet voice, ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ then he got louder, ‘you are about
to see,’ then bellowed, ‘a singer of great renown.’ He pronounced ‘renown’ as if the word tasted sweet.

Priest whispered to Papa, ‘A singer? How unexpected. Who could it be?’

Boxman bowed, doing a round wave with his hand, almost as if he were making the shape of a fire hoop. Papa and Priest clapped and Boxman nodded for me to pull the curtain string. And there was Mama, standing with an old microphone between her hands.

She looked beautiful, like a seahorse, like the ones we saw coming close to shore, standing upright, but floating at the same time.

Boxman put the accordion to his chest. And Mama sang as if she were somewhere else, as if Boxman’s barn was full of things none of us had seen before. She sang in French. Her voice was like Boxman’s sharp-edged saw, like the ocean on a windy night. It seeped sorrowfully through the hay bales, the barn and the rain outside. Boxman cried, tapping his foot to the rhythm while his tears fell into the accordion. Papa and Priest seemed mesmerised, and No Name followed Mama’s movements intently from his spot near the stage.

‘I didn’t know your mama could speak French,’ Papa said in the short break that followed. And
when Mama came out from behind the curtain and waved me backstage, he smiled at her almost shyly, as though they hadn’t met before.

No Name had to get out of his cardigan before he could perform in the burning hoop trick. The barn smelled of petrol and Boxman yelled in an angry voice, ‘Come, come, come, jump … yes … Hoopla!’ And No Name didn’t look nervous at all. He jumped through the hoop twice, and seemed to like the applause. Even Mama clapped.

Then it was my turn.

‘Clowns fall,’ Boxman had explained during practice.

‘But won’t everyone feel sad when I fall?’ I asked.

‘Yes, but if you do it well, then they will also laugh,’ he answered. ‘You will make them feel happy and sad. That’s the art of being a clown. But it’s important that you remember to pause between your falls. Otherwise the audience will get worn out by all that emotion.’

During my act, I remembered to pause. I fell over imaginary things, waited, then fell again, while Boxman played a dramatic tune on the accordion.

‘Imagine that there is something in front of you,’ Boxman had said during practice. ‘Elephants,
hats, bottles with thick green bubbling liquid, a cloud, another clown, an old key, imagine it all and fall.’

At my first fall Priest gave a frightful cry. Papa tried to assure him that I was fine. ‘She is a clown,’ I heard him say, ‘she is supposed to fall. She is doing a wonderful job.’

But at my next fall Priest shouted, ‘Watch out, Minou, watch out.’

He startled Boxman, who for a moment stopped playing, and when I took my final bow I saw that Priest was clutching Papa’s hand, making it hard for either of them to clap.

It didn’t get better during the box trick. Mama was a good actress. She trembled as she crawled into the box and Priest clung to Papa during the entire act.

I had seen Mama and Boxman rehearse it many times, and I didn’t like to watch when Boxman raised the saw and Mama started to moan, ‘Oh no, no, no. Don’t saw me in half. Please Mister, please. Spare me. There are many other women out there, why me? I like my legs.’ Boxman acted as if he didn’t hear her and the saw went grate, grate, grate through the wood.

Papa and Priest couldn’t stop clapping when Mama emerged unharmed from the box. She bowed several times and sent them lots of kisses. Then she nodded for me to draw the curtain. The applause died down and the barn fell quiet. Boxman climbed the ladder and readjusted the spotlight so it shone a soft pink. Then he joined Mama behind the curtain.