The effect took the audience aback. Fifty feet above them, a woman stood on the shoulders of another woman who stood on a pole supported by two men riding bicycles on a wire. And there was no net. As they reached the middle of the wire, more than one gasp involuntarily escaped from the audience. The woman on top had placed her hands on the shoulders of the woman below her and inverted her body in a handstand. She wobbled slightly as the performers moved to the end of the wire, and a woman in the audience screamed. The crowd was otherwise so quiet that people on the opposite side of the ring heard her husband’s admonishments. They reached the far platform, finally, after what seemed to those watching like hours.
At first people were too shocked to know what to do. After several seconds, they stood, almost in unison, clapping, yelling and cheering wildly.
Up on the platform, Salvo completely misread the audience. To him they sounded angry, and many were whistling loud, shrill whistles, which in Europe was dangerously unlucky and a sign of extreme disapproval.
“Come quickly,” he said to the others, and he slid down the rope ladder as fast as he could and retreated to their corner of the performers’ area. There they huddled, András and Etel and Margit all agreeing with Salvo’s impression, believing that the crowd had hated their act and was calling for their heads.
A stagehand ran towards them, looking confused. “What are you doing? Get back out there,” he said, pulling on Salvo’s arm.
Salvo refused to budge. “Are you crazy? They’ll lynch us.”
“You’ve got it wrong, Ursari,” the man said. “They loved you. They want a bow. This is an ovation.”
It began to sink in. As they climbed the ladder to the wire and looked at the faces of individuals in the stands, they saw that indeed they were not angry, that they had thoroughly enjoyed the act. From the platform they gave a bow, waving, the enthusiastic crowd responding with a crescendo of applause.
Later, as they sat in their railcar, the others chided Salvo.
“They’ll lynch us,” Margit laughed, mimicking Salvo.
András said nothing, but smiled.
“Can you believe them?” Etel said. “They were crazy for us.”
“We’re a good act,” Margit said. “Maybe the best in the circus.”
“Be careful where you say that,” András said. He had already seen firsthand how jealous some performers could be.
Salvo sat off to the side, not joining the conversation. He was exhausted and worried. The act had not been as tight as he felt it should be. He could feel during the last trick that their timing had been off. They would have to practise harder. “We get up early tomorrow,” he said. “We have much to work on.”
Margit, her back to Salvo, made a face, which made András laugh, but no one said anything. There was a knock at the door, and before anyone could answer it, the door swung open.
Cole Fisher-Fielding, immaculately groomed and tuxedoed, strode into the railcar. “Congratulations, Ursaris,” he said. He presented Etel and Margit each with a bouquet of flowers. Salvo and András received cigars similar to the one protruding from the corner of his mouth. An attendant followed with a tray bearing a bottle and five glasses, which he set on the small table in the middle of the car before being dismissed with a casual wave of Fisher-Fielding’s hand.
Cole poured a golden brown liquid into the glasses and passed them out, two fingers for the women and three for the men. He raised his glass. Everyone followed his example. “To a long and happy partnership between the Fisher-Fielding Circus Company and the Magnificent Ursari Troupe,” he said, downing the contents of his glass.
Salvo drained his glass too, rye whisky burning his throat and stomach. “Thank you, sir. We’ll do our best.”
Fisher-Fielding laughed. “I have no doubt of that. Carry on.” And as quickly as he had come, he was gone.
Cole was more than a little preoccupied that evening. His control of the F-F was now threatened by a group he had christened “the Spouses.” Originally, no official agreement of partnership had been made among the Fisher-Fieldings. When their brother Trevor, the third oldest, had died suddenly in 1920, lawyers were able to convince them of the need for a formal documentation of ownership. Since Trevor had never married and had no known heirs, they agreed to split the F-F’s ownership seven ways, Trevor’s former share being split between “the Respectables,” the siblings that had not been involved in the circus. It was a point of contention, and Cole had argued against it, but the others won out. Now it was coming back to haunt him.
His eldest circus brother had produced one child, Martin Fisher-Fielding, who was a firm ally of Cole’s. The second circus sibling, a sister named Mary, had borne two children, neither of whom had any interest in the circus whatsoever and had been content to sell Cole their share of the business. Here was where things got tricky for Cole. His sister Evelyn, his favourite sibling, two years older than him, had married a real-estate baron named Phillip Barnes against the advice of Cole, a fact that Phillip knew. His next oldest sibling, Winston Fisher-Fielding, had married a southern belle named Rebecca, and they’d had a son, Norris Fisher-Fielding. Following first Winston and then Evelyn’s death, Phillip Barnes and Rebecca Fisher-Fielding married. Though it reminded Cole far too much of Hamlet for any degree of comfort, Norris didn’t seem to mind his mother and uncle engaging in matrimony; in fact, he seemed enthusiastic about it. Rebecca, who had never much cared for Cole, and Phillip, who still begrudged the fact that Cole had advised against his marriage to Evelyn, now controlled two-sevenths of the F-F.
Cole’s brother Peter had died nearly twenty years earlier, leaving his wife, Charlotte, with half his interest, and his son John with the other half. John, in an attempt to spite his mother, whom he deeply resented for an unhappy childhood, had always sided with Cole in the past. Charlotte was great friends with Rebecca Fisher-Fielding-Barnes and always voted with her interests.
As a result, Cole, between his shares and the support of his nephews Martin and John, controlled a fifty per cent share of the F-F, which was enough to swing any vote. A stipulation of the one-seventh share that the rest of the family controlled was that they didn’t have any vote unless there was a tie, in which case they cast the deciding opinion.
Three days earlier, John Fisher-Fielding had been killed in an automobile accident. He was unmarried and hadn’t left a will, and as a result his share of the F-F Circus Company would revert to his mother, his closest living relative. Now things had swung into uncertainty: Cole Fisher-Fielding controlled three-sevenths of the company, as did the Spouses. This meant that any vote would be tied, and the Respectables had the tiebreaker.
In the past, the committee of ten or so varied relatives that made up the Respectables had shown a complete inability to grasp the business of circus entertainment, concerned with nothing else than the financial rewards of their collective one-seventh interest. Cole was relatively certain that in the event of a tie, they could be easily lured into the Spouses’ camp by the promise of larger profits. They neither knew nor cared about the intent or the feelings of the original siblings. Few could even keep straight in their heads who was who.
Fortunately, Cole had been elected to a five-year term as president of the Fisher-Fielding Circus Company in 1937 and would have four more years before he’d be in any real danger. Still, there would be a fight ahead, he knew.
The wire walkers, at rest in their railcar, knew nothing of the circus’s politics. As they lay down for the night, they fell asleep: first András, then Margit, then Etel. Salvo, kept awake by fears of the dark, elephants, the future and the past, did not know that elsewhere Cole Fisher-Fielding was awake as well, with fears of his own.
ONE OF THE FIRST PEOPLE SALVO MET in the Extravaganza was a dark-skinned man named Emil Narwha. He might have been from India, or he might have been French, or he might have been from just down the road from wherever they were on a given day. Salvo had never asked Emil about his past and Emil had never asked Salvo, an
unspoken arrangement that seemed to serve them both. For the first few weeks neither man spoke much. They stood and leaned against the side wall of the main tent, watching the bustle of the F-F pass them by, giving no indication of what they thought about it all. It was only after quite a while that Salvo discovered Emil was the head elephant wrangler, an exceedingly important position. He had held this post for over thirty years, long enough for the elephants to regard him as one of their kind, to look at the leathery old man as their father.
Salvo watched him work with the elephants, wondering how anyone could place his trust in a beast so large, something that could kill him without effort. Emil Narwha did just this, however, to Salvo’s continual amazement. Gentle and patient Emil trained the elephants to do his bidding, and the elephants responded with their nearly complete cooperation.
After months of nods and abbreviated hellos, Salvo decided to ask Emil about what had been bothering him since he’d first discovered Emil’s occupation.
Emil looked at him in surprise. “Afraid? That is an odd thing for a man like you to ask.”
Salvo smiled and shrugged, feeling a little foolish. “I would walk the highest wire in the world before I would let an elephant touch me with its nose.”
“Trunk,” Emil said. “And you would never get me on any wire.”
“But you are not afraid at all?”
Emil thought before replying. “Some people believe all animals are good. I do not believe this. I have seen an elephant stalk a man, always watching him with one eye, waiting for him to make a mistake, to get too close. And I have seen that elephant crush his enemy, and I would swear that the elephant enjoyed the man’s screams and the crunching of his bones beneath his feet. I see that an animal can hold evil within it, and I’ve no doubt of that. But most are not this way; certainly none of my elephants. I treat them well, and they treat me well.”
Salvo frowned. “How do you know if an elephant’s evil?”
“Same as people. Easy to tell if you look properly.”
Yet it seemed to Salvo that a great amount of evil was very well hidden. It could hide anywhere, in the hearts of strangers, loved ones, even in his own heart. It also seemed to him that hidden evil was the worst kind, and he envisioned it stalking him, huge and grey and shadowy. There was no escaping it, no running away.
“Cheer up, Ursari. Maybe one day you can ride on one of my elephants. Then you’ll see.”
Salvo shook his head no, and Emil chuckled as he walked back towards the menagerie. “You’ll see one day. You will change your mind.”
I doubt that very much, Salvo said to himself, but as he walked away he felt a certain kinship with Emil, a new admiration for the things he did not understand. As he passed the elephants, though, he could not bring himself to even look at them. He still remembered Good Bear the Bear, and to catch the gaze of a sorrowful camel or giraffe could move him near to tears. But the elephants were different, somehow. Salvo hated them. He felt that they were assessing him, plotting against him, and that if they ever got the chance they would do him whatever harm they could, a suspicion that had just been unintentionally reinforced. Sometimes on a certain cue from Emil, the elephants would join trunk to tail to trunk, marching wherever directed, and more than once in his endless moments before sleep, Salvo had visions of an endless train of elephants rushing towards him, relentlessly seeking to grind him into the earth, to tear him limbless. There were times when Salvo thought he might like to kill them.
ANDRÁS WALKED PAST THE BIG TOP, hoping to find a vendor who would give him a hot dog, or at worst, sell him one. A group of clowns went by, one of them a man András had seen vomiting outside their railcar several nights earlier. Today he looked miserable, his hands shaking and his walk hesitant. András noticed that several of the other clowns seemed to share this demeanour. He didn’t know that the clowns had a reputation for being drunks, or that they often got into knock-down brawls with other performers, or the circus police. The clowns he had seen in Europe were not the same as these, that much he could tell at a glance. He had no urge to speak with or get to know them.
András had the same keep-to-himself attitude about most things the F-F had to offer. He enjoyed his life there immensely, loved the energy and the excitement, the continuous crowds and the travel. But he much preferred to be an observer than an active participant. He even thought, at times, that he would rather be in the audience than a member of the circus, but knew that for the audience it was a treat, not how things were every day, and that if he were not a performer he likely would never get to attend a show, so he did not feel overly sorry about his position.
None of the vendors were out yet. András’s stomach growled dissatisfaction, but there was nothing to be done about it. He doubled back towards the big top. If he checked the rigging now, maybe there would be time for a hot dog later. He saw Etel standing beside the main entrance, smoking.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked.
Etel shrugged. “Margit is complaining again.”
“About what?”
“Anything she can think of.” Etel flicked the stub of her cigarette onto the ground, stepping on it. She quickly rolled and lit another.
“She does not like your smoking.” András did not tell Etel it was because the smell of smoke reminded her of Tomas Skosa.
“That is too bad for her. I do not like her griping.”
András shook his head. “It’s not so bad.”
“Why do you stand up for her?” Etel slashed at the air with her hand.
“Why do you attack her?” András’s voice was raised, and he felt the muscles in his back tense.
Etel took a long drag off her cigarette, inhaling nearly half its length. “You are in love with her.” It was not a question, but as soon as Etel said it she realized it was true.
András looked down at his feet, then brought his eyes up to meet his sister’s. “What if I am?”
Etel’s eyes were cold, her lips pursed. “You do what you like.”
András turned and walked away from the big top. He was no longer interested in checking the rigging, no longer interested in hot dogs.
Etel dropped what was left of her cigarette. As she was about to grind it into the earth, a small clump of dried grass caught fire. Etel watched it burn, knowing she should stamp it out. After more time than was sensible, she finally brought her foot down upon the flame.
WHEN WAR CAME TO EUROPE IN 1939, the troupe’s decision to come to America was rapidly validated. This was before they even knew what was happening to Roma in the camps. However, in 1941, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into the war, they found themselves, as Hungarians, citizens of an enemy nation. Salvo, fearing persecution, contemplated shelving the act until the war was over, but he soon discovered that few people knew or cared that he was a Hungarian, just as few had cared that he was a Rom. As long as he walked the wire it seemed he could do no wrong. There were of course isolated exceptions. One man hired to help with their rigging was caught purposely slackening a guy wire during a performance. It turned out the man’s brother had been killed the month before by enemy fire, which he somehow blamed on the Ursaris. The man was sacked, and though Cole Fisher-Fielding denied it when Salvo asked, Salvo suspected that the man was beaten up by members of the circus police on Cole’s orders. Either way, András swore he saw the man being roughed up behind the menagerie. He did not attempt to interfere.
Salvo spent nearly all of his waking hours on the act, trying to devise new routines, new tricks, new techniques, anything to keep the act fresh and exciting. They were capable of performing nearly fifty separate manoeuvres and had four showstoppers, all variations on the three-level pyramid they had performed for their first crowd in America. Because they travelled to the same cities each season, Cole Fisher-Fielding insisted that the audience get to see different tricks from year to year, and Salvo readily complied. He enjoyed nothing more than the development of new feats.
&nb
sp; The war brought increased crowds to the F-F Extravaganza. People’s pockets were full of money, their minds eager for any kind of distraction, so the big top was very nearly always full, and attendance was at record levels. Their winter seasons were shorter, and the big top stayed on the road longer, despite rationing and a shortage of manpower. Citizens purchasing Victory Bonds received complimentary passes to the show. Anyone wearing a uniform was given free admission.
Early in 1942 the F-F had a three-day stand in the nation’s capital. This stand also happened to coincide with the Fisher-Fielding Circus Company’s annual general meeting; Cole’s five-year term was up, and he would face for the first time serious competition for the top job in the form of Norris Fisher-Fielding, his nephew. The Spouses had not been idle since the balance of power had shifted in their favour. It was a toss-up as to who would rule the circus for the next five years.
On the day of the opening performance there was no matinee scheduled. Instead, the A-list performers were invited to a reception for the Respectables, an invitation that was not optional. Salvo, much to his disappointment and trepidation, was the only one of the Ursari troupe invited. He would be forced to mingle with the other performers, something he did not particularly enjoy.
Salvo never considered not attending, though. The majority of the performers respected and admired Cole, even if they didn’t always like him, and most were more than willing to show their support for his leadership. Even those who were not disposed to like him had to admit that he was a better boss than Norris Fisher-Fielding was likely to be. Cole had built the F-F from nothing, whereas Norris was an Ivy League snob with a lazy eye and a voice that seemed to come through his nose. The choice was an easy one for most.