Sirius (14 page)

They are speechless, experiencing a wonder that quashes all the laws of nature.

So he continues regardless. The tiny little creature creeps into the time machine. Magic word – and look! Out scrabbles Hercules as a whelp.

Manzini holds him up high, and with a flourish of his hand – magic word and hey presto! – Hercules vanishes into thin air.

And the time machine? Manzini dismantles the little black box – empty.

The magician bows to thunderous applause.

“For the love of God,” whispers Rahel. “Where’s Sirius?”

“I don’t know,” Carl whispers back. He’s spellbound too.

And the show goes on. One sensation after the next. Gargantua in his cage. Don Dente and his bite into the tightrope. The polar bears’ double somersaults. The five Chinese women on the unicycle. But Carl and Rahel aren’t concerned by whether the artistes accomplish their feats. They’re whispering to one another, wondering where their dog might be.

There he is! Hercules trots into the tent, clearly exhausted from all the time travelling. The relieved audience welcomes him with a standing ovation.

The circus director greets present-day Hercules and wishes him luck with his next task.

Fanfare from the orchestra.

“Viewers of a nervous disposition,” he warns, “should leave the tent now. As should viewers with heart problems. Hercules is now going to confront Benares, Africa’s fiercest lion!”

The audience is almost at breaking point. Most of the onlookers reach gratefully for the masks with eye slits that are being passed around the rows. Some faint.

Benares lurks in his cage, grunting with relish in anticipation of the dog which is about to be thrown for him to devour. Barbarossa is using all of his force to hold him back.

Then Hercules steps through the cage door. It’s a small step for the dog, but a big step for the animal world. For the first time in the history of the animal kingdom, a fox terrier is standing opposite a lion.

Unbelievably, the dog jumps bravely onto the King of the Mammals and rides him triumphantly around the circus ring.

The audience goes wild.

Rahel holds her hands in front of the eye slits of her mask and sighs: “Is he still alive?”

“He’s alive,” says Carl.

*

All of America is eager to see Hercules. The final performance in Sarasota takes place on New Year’s Eve, then the circus takes down the tent and goes on tour.

An undertaking which is much easier said than done.

Even the departure of the average four-person family on a journey isn’t without a certain amount of commotion. So naturally the decampment of a 1,500-strong circus troop with 2,000 animals in tow is a gargantuan task in comparison. Not to mention dismantling the circus tent itself.

A chartered train is waiting at the platform in Sarasota. Wagon after wagon is being loaded up. By the end, the train is 1.5 kilometres long.

The travelling village and zoo-on-wheels, a gorilla and Hercules in the thick of it all, sets off on a cross-country journey.

President Roosevelt himself has granted the touring circus special dispensation. Rail transport is strictly limited during wartime, but the circus is classified as being “essential for the nation’s morale”.

Only now does it become completely clear why the spectacle is regarded as The Greatest Show on Earth.

Four million visitors are expected during the course of the tour. The first stop is Cleveland.

Manzini has driven on ahead in his own car. Through fear that something might happen to his precious time machine on the train.

At their destination, he and Hercules share a caravan again. Everything is just the same as always.

Except that it isn’t.

Hercules seems agitated. He eyes the covered time machine nervously and growls. Strange. After all, he’s very familiar with it by now.

When Drago appears, the dog flinches back and lowers his tail close to his body.

“Bizarre,” says Drago.

He launches into a stunt in which Hercules always obeys by jumping onto his back, but the dog just stares into nothingness.

Barbarossa, who they call over at once, is equally baffled.

“Hercules, come here!” he calls, stretching out his hand.

The dog doesn’t react.

“It’s like he’s a completely different dog!” gapes Drago.

Manzini wrinkles his forehead thoughtfully. “The Turk,” he mumbles.

*

News of the puzzling incident does the rounds in next to no time. John Ringling North himself comes storming over.

“What’s this I’m hearing?” he roars. “Hercules isn’t Hercules?”

Barbarossa, Drago and Manzini stand there in confusion. Even Hercules, who it seems isn’t Hercules, looks confused.

“What’s going on here?” explodes John Ringling North. “I demand to know at once what’s going on!”

“We don’t know either,” says Drago timidly.

Barbarossa can only stammer. “The dog doesn’t recognize us anymore. It’s like he’s completely different.”

“Hercules!” Barbarossa commands the dog. The dog doesn’t react, he simply whimpers helplessly.

“See,” says Drago with a shrug of his shoulders. “It’s a mystery.”

John Ringling North does see. He sees with the eyes of a circus director whose star act has just vanished into thin air right in front of him.

“This is a catastrophe,” he laments. “A catastrophe.”

Manzini has only one explanation: “The time machine.”

“Oh, give it a rest!” bellows the circus director. “Hercules didn’t
really
evaporate into thin air, or do you actually believe that?”

Manzini isn’t a fantasist. He’s an illusionist. And the two are worlds apart. This is a matter of professional honour.

But here he stands, and he has no other option. He has to reveal the secret of his time machine. For years he has protected it, concealed it, guarded it, shielded it, silenced it. And now he has to reveal it.

So what appears to be one dog is in truth four dogs. Four dogs of different sizes. As soon as the smaller one slips into the time machine, the bigger one disappears. How exactly that happens is something that Manzini will continue to keep under wraps.

All he says is this: “After the last performance, the dogs were switched.”

“Switched?” asked the circus director in horror.

“Well, puppies grow bigger after all,” explains Manzini. “In three months the puppy won’t be a puppy anymore, and the medium sized dog will be as big as Hercules.”

This sheds some light on things. The dogs were switched for the tour. The circus director thinks intensely.

“Who switched the dogs?” he asks.

“The Turk,” replies Manzini. “He’s an animal handler of sorts. He brings us magicians the animals we need; rabbits, doves and so on. He also takes away with him the animals that we don’t need anymore.”

The mystery is solved. In his haste, the Turk confused the dogs and took Hercules with him by mistake.

“This is your fault!” declares the circus director, prodding his index finger into Manzini’s chest. “If you had been paying attention, the mix-up would never have happened. Tell the Turk to bring Hercules back at once!”

With those words, he considers the matter dealt with. He strides off assertively.

The dog who isn’t Hercules didn’t understand a single word. Drago, if he is honest, didn’t either.

Barbarossa can only hope that Manzini knows how to sort things out. He is a magician after all.

But for once, Manzini can’t conjure up what they need.

The Turk was there just a week ago, and he won’t be back again for three months. No-one knows exactly where he goes in between. It seems as though he too has vanished into thin air.

*

The Turk has long since boarded a ship to Europe. He has already sold the puppies on board. An old lady was completely ecstatic with her purchase.

She wanted to have one of the trained rabbits too, but he needs to take these to the Sarassani Circus in Dresden. Along with the talking parrot. The four dancing cats are expected in the Pirelli Circus in Rome.

Arriving on dry land, in Bremen, the Turk gets rid of one of the two remaining dogs. The smaller one. Bartered for his hotel bill.

Now he just has the bigger dog in his possession. He should have thrown him overboard, he thinks to himself. Who would want some shaggy mongrel that’s been discharged from the circus?

On his next stop, the Turk simply opens the car door and pushes the dog out in the middle of the city.

Sirius lies there in the gutter. He feels dizzy. At first he thought the journey was part of the tour they were always talking about. But no, this is obviously not Cleveland.

Sirius rubs his eyes. Thick snow is falling from the sky. For some reason, his surroundings look familiar. Is he in Berlin? If he’s not mistaken, then that must be the Kurfürstendamm up ahead.

And it is.

Could it be possible that Manzini’s time machine really worked?

Before he can give the matter any more thought, Sirius finds himself standing in front of his tree.

“You’re here?” asks the tree.

“Yes,” says Sirius, exhausted.

“How?” asks the tree.

“Oh, it’s a long story,” sighs Sirius.

Isn’t that Frau Zinke? She’s sweeping the snow from the pavement, just like she used to.

An SS man comes their way. Frau Zinke salutes: “Heil Hitler, Herr Hauptsturmführer!”

“Is this
your
dog?” asks the Hauptsturmführer.

“Which dog?” asks Frau Zinke.

“This one here,” says the Hauptsturmführer, leaning over to Sirius and stroking him. “Good boy.”

Frau Zinke pauses. “No, but for some reason he looks familiar.”

She wrinkles her brow and thinks back.

“There was a dog here once, many years ago, that looked similar to this one. He was called Levi, if I remember rightly.”

“Levi?” laughs the Hauptsturmführer. “The kind of people who gave their dogs names like that aren’t around anymore.”

“That’s true,” giggles Frau Zinke. “I’m getting old and forgetful.”

The SS man clicks his heels. “Then he’s a stray. Impounded!”

He leads Sirius away.

“Look what I’ve brought you,” calls the Hauptsturmführer as he arrives home to his family that evening. “Our new dog. Hansi.”

REICHSMARSCHALL HERMANN
GÖRING
has many roles; amongst other titles he is also the Reich Minister for the Conservation of Forests. The Reich Ministry for the Conservation of Forests, in turn, is in command of the Reich Ministry for Nature Conservation, and within this authority is the Department for Bird Protection.

One might think that the well-being of blackbirds, thrushes, finches and starlings would be a low priority during wartime – but that’s not the case. The Führer is a self-proclaimed bird lover. There’s hardly anything that lies closer to his heart than the fluttering creatures. He has personally vowed to “hold his protective hand over the hedges.”

What hedges? After all, birds fly. But the Führer has already thought of that. His protective hand even stretches to the hedges that have only recently been conquered. Hedges in Russia, for example.

The soldiers on the front have been instructed to show consideration for the birds while creating new “living space”. They receive guidelines on the construction of nesting boxes and feeders. Tonnes of hempseed and sunflower seeds are transported to the front, as winter sustenance for the birds.

This is the kind of thing that usually gets forgotten, but in this war, the birds are being looked after.

Erwin Wünsche is the man who takes care of all this. He is the leader of the Department for Bird Protection. Office 322, Floor 2. And he’s good at what he does. He was recently promoted to Hauptsturmführer by his highest superior.

“The bird,” said Göring in his address, “is our ambassador. We Germans are a people of the forests. Unlike the Jews. They are a people of the desert. German forests and German birds, they belong together. A bird singing in the forest is the most beautiful German song in existence.” Wünsche was deeply moved by these words.

Since then, whenever he hears a blackbird or thrush singing its song, he clicks his heels together and cries: “Heil Hitler!”

Wünsche was dead set on getting himself a German shepherd. German man and German dog, they belong together too.

But Heinrich Docht, in Office 321 next door, advised him against it. His two year-old daughter was attacked by his German shepherd, and now she only has one eye.

Wünsche’s children are older, admittedly: Rudi has just become a member of the Hitler Youth’s
Jungvolk
, and Ulrich is already a patrol leader. But still. They need to embark on their journey through life with two eyes, that’s the very least the
Jungvolk
should be able to expect.

And so it came about that a fox terrier joined their household: Hansi.

The Hauptsturmführer is no longer that bothered about the breed, as long as it’s a dog. With humans, of course, it’s a different matter. Humans are not all equal – oh no, in that context race is very important.

He even goes a step further: any dog called Hansi has to be a German dog.

Mistakes can be made, however. When it comes to Sirius, Erwin Wünsche has made the wrong choice. But how could he possibly know that?

“Hansi!” he commands. “Walkies!”

A walk wouldn’t be the right description for what the two of them are doing. The Hauptsturmführer marches in goose-step through the streets, with Sirius following on a taut lead. They both like lingering around trees; the dog certainly does, and the master even more so. It makes Wünsche feel like a proud representative of the People of the Forest.

Here and there, the Hauptsturmführer addresses a passerby who doesn’t seem Germanic enough to him.

“You there!” he calls. “Come here a moment!”

The passerby then has to show his papers. After all, he could be one of those desert people still trespassing through the undergrowth of the German forests.

“Strange birds,” is what the Hauptsturmführer calls such people. The German Reich needs to be protected from them. Bird Protection includes this too.