Pegasus: A Novel (15 page)

Toby and Katja went outside immediately afterward, and sat in the warm night air,
talking about the things that mattered to them. Katja confessed to Toby that she wanted
to leave the circus one day and have a normal life and a home and not live in a trailer,
which seemed reasonable to him. She said her parents would be very upset if she said
it to them. They thought this was the best life in the world, and Katja didn’t. She
wanted more.

“What about you?” she asked Toby with her big blue eyes, and he thought about it for
a minute before he answered.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what I want to do, except go back to Germany one day.”
Just saying it made him miss his grandfather again, and Marianne and all his friends.

“I want to stay here,” Katja added, “in America, not Florida. I liked New York when
we went there. It’s always great at Madison Square Garden when we start the season.”
Her eyes lit up as she said it. “I don’t want to go back to Prague, it was boring.
I think my mother misses it, but I don’t. It’s better here.” Toby didn’t know if
that was true yet. He hadn’t been there long enough to decide. All he did know was
that he liked her a lot, and after they talked for a while, he kissed her. He didn’t
tell her, but she was the first girl he had ever kissed, and his head was swimming
when they stopped. And so was hers. He kissed her again then, and they were better
at it. It seemed to be something one had to learn. And they were both more than willing
to apply themselves to it. They were still working on it when Lucas came around the
trailer, saw them kissing, and stopped dead in his tracks, and then giggled and disappeared.
He went to tell Rosie what he’d seen.

“How stupid,” Rosie said with a disgusted look. “My father will be mad if he finds
out. Katja’s not allowed to kiss boys. He doesn’t want her acting like ‘some little
tart in the circus,’ whatever that means. He tells her that all the time.”

“I think they like each other a lot,” Lucas confided, and Rosie agreed. “I don’t think
we should tell.” She made him pinkie-swear not to then, which she said was something
she had learned at school. They went to school in Florida in the winter, but the rest
of the time, on tour, they were tutored, which she liked better. The teachers at the
circus didn’t give as much homework, but sometimes her mother did instead. She wanted
her to get a good education, which Rosie thought was boring.

When Nick and the boys went home that night, everyone looked sated and happy. Nick
had had several glasses of wine, and had relaxed for the first time in a long time.
He had played chess with Sergei and won, and enjoyed talking to his brothers. They
had all spoken German to him and his boys, and Czech among themselves, and the children
had spoken English to each other. It had been a wonderful family evening, and Nick
had been touched to be included. He felt as though he had friends there now, and Sergei
wanted to come and watch Nick work with his horses. He wanted to see Pegasus do his
croupade, which several people had told him was amazing and hard to believe, and made
Pegasus look like he was flying. People were beginning to know him by name now, by
his new name, not the old one.

“They’re good people,” Nick said to Toby and Lucas as they walked into the trailer,
which didn’t look quite as bleak now, knowing they had friends nearby. Toby had stars
in his eyes and only nodded, and Lucas giggled as they went to get ready for bed.
He didn’t tell Toby he’d seen him kissing Katja. Toby was totally besotted as he brushed
his teeth, put on his pajamas, and went to bed. He was in love. And Lucas wandered
into his father’s room to kiss him goodnight. Nick was on his bed writing a letter
to his father to tell him about his first Thanksgiving. It was so different from anything
Paul knew. An evening with six men who performed a trapeze act, and their wives who
were gymnasts, and Gallina on the high wire. It was hard to find the words to describe
everything, but it had been a perfect evening in his brand-new life.

“Goodnight, Papa,” Lucas said, brushing his cheek with a kiss. “Maybe I’ll be a trapeze
artist one day, instead of a clown,” he mumbled with a yawn and shuffled off to bed,
as though those were his only two options, as his father mused about how strange life
was, how rapidly things changed, and wondered what would happen to them all. If only
he knew. But for now, this was enough. It was a safe refuge from the storm brewing
in Europe.

The circus did a Christmas show every year in Sarasota, for the locals, and to try
out some of their new acts. They wanted Nick in the show, and advertised it heavily:
the Count, with the flying horses Pegasus and Athena. They had a photographer take
some impressive photographs of Pegasus in midair during a croupade, and Nick cut a
dashing figure in top hat and tails astride him. And when he did his act in the show,
the audience went wild and loved him. He was in the parade at the end, riding Pegasus,
and Toby on Athena, waving their top hats at the crowd. He was a new face, and both
women and men seemed to be excited by him. The women liked his striking good looks,
he was a very handsome man, and the men admired what he did with his horses. The introduction
of his act was a resounding success, much to the delight of John Ringling North, who
had come to watch him from a seat in the front row, and even he thought Nick’s act
was perfection. And several of the other performers had come, too, and all congratulated
Nick when he went backstage after his performance.

Nick was hanging around afterward, waiting for the parade, when
he heard the ringmaster announce the Markovich family in the main ring as the last
act after the intermission, and Nick wandered out, to stand at the edge of the ring
to watch Christianna. He had seen her practice on the low wire a few times, with her
father coaching her, but he had never seen her perform on the high wire. He was curious,
and stood silently as she shimmied gracefully up the rope to the tiny platform near
the top of the tent, as the crowd watched without uttering a sound. The band was playing
the music from
Swan Lake
, which Nick recognized instantly, but he paid no attention to it, as he watched her
move with infinite grace from the platform onto the wire.

And instinctively he lowered his eyes to see what was below her. There were handlers,
and her father in his wheelchair, and her brothers watching her closely, standing
below the high wire, in case they had to catch her. But there was no net, and as he
saw it, Nick held his breath and kept his eyes glued to her. He was mesmerized by
the tiny waiflike figure who seemed to glide through the air, standing on nothing.
She was up so high that it was hard to see the wire beneath her feet. She looked as
though she were suspended in midair, dancing, and she smiled as she did it, as though
she loved what she was doing.

The wire bounced once, and the entire crowd gasped, but she maintained her footing
effortlessly. She turned backward then, and forward again, and as he looked, Nick
started to feel sick. He couldn’t bear the suspense and the tension as he stared at
her while she took such terrifying risks. It was easy to see why she was the star
of the show. She deserved every bit of it for what she was doing. Her performance
seemed interminable as the tension mounted, and Nick felt chilled as he continued
to watch her.

And then finally, with a last graceful leap, she landed on the platform
on the other side, barely bigger than her tiny feet, and the audience burst into thunderous
applause. She grasped a loop in the rope and slid effortlessly down until she landed
on the circus floor and took an elegant bow. The crowd got to their feet immediately
and cheered her. She had risked her life for them, and they considered it entertainment,
and as he stood there afterward, Nick realized he was shaking. He had never seen anything
so terrifying in his life.

She whisked past him as she left the ring, but didn’t see him, and her brothers followed
like a palace guard, with her father wheeling his chair behind them. He had once been
as good as his daughter and notoriously more daring, and her mother had been as graceful,
everyone agreed, until she fell to her death. Nick couldn’t imagine anything being
worth taking that kind of risk. He had watched Gallina perform earlier, and she had
been far more cautious. Her act was exciting, but nothing like this. Christianna’s
performance was a combination of exquisite grace and agility, remarkable balance,
and sheer terror. And she was much too young and beautiful to die. Her mother had
been scarcely older when she lost her life, when Christianna was very young. She had
been brought up by her father and aunt, Nick had been told.

He was still shaken when he mounted Pegasus a few minutes later for the parade. Christianna
had been the grand finale, and deservedly so. And then the parade lightened the mood
again, with every performer in it, all the animals, the stars of the show riding elephants,
and Christianna among them, while the clowns cavorted around them, and the music celebrated
the close of the show. There had been no mishaps, but Nick had felt as though his
heart would stop as he watched Christianna. Pegasus pranced past her at one point
in the parade, as she rode the largest elephant, standing on his back, and she looked
at Nick. Their eyes met, and he saluted her
with his top hat, and then she smiled. She looked as light as air as she danced along
beside him for a moment, and then he led Pegasus into a slow canter and moved ahead.
Nick realized there was something riveting about her every time he saw her. He didn’t
know if it was the shocking risks she took with her own life, or her sheer beauty.
But either way, he felt haunted for hours afterward whenever they met. And he couldn’t
imagine why her father let her do it, particularly given what had happened to him,
and her mother. Clearly, as Gallina said, they were mad.

At the end of the show, he and Toby took the horses back to their tent, and brushed
and fed them, and then he walked slowly back to the trailer with his son. He felt
dizzy and almost drunk from the sounds and smells of the circus that day. He could
still hear the music in his head.

“I watched Christianna Markovich tonight,” Nick said casually to Toby as they wandered
home. Their own performance had been exhilarating that night. Pegasus had been the
hit of the show, and Nick along with him. “That’s an insane thing to do,” Nick said,
still feeling queasy when he thought of what he’d seen Christianna doing. At any moment,
she could have plummeted to her death, with the smallest slip. Gallina’s high-wire
act was entertaining. Christianna’s was death-defying magic. There was a huge difference,
and Nick had been aware of it instantly.

“Everyone says they’re crazy,” Toby said nonchalantly.

“Her father certainly is, to let her do it. I would kill you if you ever wanted to
do something that dangerous.” Nick still couldn’t understand it. Nothing justified
the risk.

“It’s what they do,” Toby said with a grin. In six weeks, the circus and everything
that went with it had begun to seem normal to him. And now that he was infatuated
with Katja, he was having fun there.
Their romance was blazing. Both families were aware of it, and thought it was sweet,
as long as it didn’t get out of hand. And Gallina watched Katja carefully and had
strict rules. Nick had warned his son not to go too far—she was a nice girl. Toby
had promised to be reasonable. It was innocent and sweet, and their parents wanted
it to stay that way.

That night as he lay in bed in his trailer, Nick thought about Christianna again,
and her extraordinary high-wire act. He couldn’t get her out of his mind. He could
still see her dancing on the wire, turning backward and then forward again, high above
the crowd. He had nightmares about it that night, as though he could see her falling,
and in his dream he reached out to catch her, but couldn’t get to her in time, and
she fell into a deep hole in silence, her eyes watching him until she disappeared.
Nick woke up in a cold sweat, and was still thinking about her when he went back to
sleep. He felt better in the morning, but he hated what he had seen the night before.
That much danger seemed like too much to him. He said something about it to Gallina
that afternoon, and she rolled her eyes.

“That whole family has a death wish,” she said with disapproval. “I think her father
pushes her to do it. He’s a crazy old man who thinks that the only thing that matters
is the high wire. She should at least use a net, but then I suppose the audience wouldn’t
love it the way they do. I’m not willing to take those chances. I have children,”
she said simply. Nick knew that she occasionally worked without a net, too, but less
and less now. And when she didn’t, Sergei stayed angry at her for weeks. The circus
didn’t expect her to take that kind of risk—they had Christianna to do that. And Christianna
had a younger sister their father was grooming too. She was only thirteen and too
young for the high wire. But soon she’d be up there.

Two days after the Christmas show, Nick and the boys celebrated
a quiet Christmas Eve together. They had bought a small tree and decorated it in the
trailer. Nick bought lights, and Toby helped him string them up outside. The trailer
looked festive, but still pretty bleak. It was the thing Nick disliked most about
circus life. He hated the trailer, and living less well than his horses. But it was
their life now. And they all lived the same way in the circus.

Nick lit candles on the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, and it reminded them of Germany.
He felt a lump in his throat as he sat with his children, trying not to think of the
people they’d left behind and a lifetime of Christmases at the schloss. They’d been
in Florida for almost two months, but in some ways it felt like an eternity to him.
His sons were adjusting well, but there were times when he wondered if he would ever
have a normal life again, among the people he’d grown up with, in the home his family
had lived in for centuries. Everything here was new and totally foreign to him, except
his children, and their horses. Everything else still felt strange. He questioned
if he’d ever fully adjust to this life, or be allowed to go home again, or if he’d
be an outcast forever.