On Allerheiligentag—All Saints Day—the first day of November 1878, a dwarf baby is abandoned inside a church in Emmerich, the last German town before the Dutch border. Allerheiligentag gathers all martyrs—the nameless and the famous—into one feast day to ensure none is ignored. In ancient times each martyred saint was honored on the anniversary of martyrdom; but the Romans killed so many more that it became impossible to document all martyrs’ fates and names.
When the Ludwig Zirkus arrives in Emmerich that afternoon for winter training, a priest carries the foundling to the Rhein meadow where our crew is setting up.
“The girl will fit in with you,” the priest tells us.
Silvio tilts his head. “Why is that?”
“She’ll be more … accepted if she lives with her own.”
“Her own…” Silvio nods. “But I’m not a dwarf.”
The giant Nowack pushes past him and claims the tiny baby with the big head from the priest—eighteen years of marriage and five miscarriages—and in an instant his wife, Luzia, is by his side, one palm on the baby’s belly.
“She’s half-starved,” Kalle says.
“We cannot take a baby on the road,” says Silvio, known for his attention to safety for everyone, animals and humans, especially his father. And this baby is even more vulnerable than his father.
“We’ve taken a baby on the road before.” Luzia motions to my daughter who caresses the baby’s hands.
“That was twenty years ago,” Silvio says, “and we’re all much older.”
“Does she have a name?” I ask the priest.
“I don’t know.”
“With foundlings there’s often a note pinned to the blanket.”
“Not with this one.”
“But did you check inside the blanket?” I insist.
He glares at me. “I said there is no note.” And starts an endless story about an endless journey across a bridge that’s sometimes flooded and he’s not sure if he has to stay overnight to hold the wedding Mass for his brother’s ninth daughter and that he could not take a baby with him. “Will you keep her for just one day?”
Luzia and the giant Nowack huddle around the baby as if that could hide her from Silvio who’s grumbling. “One day. She can stay one day.”
“She’s half-starved,” Kalle says again.
Luzia carries her when we crowd into The Last Supper and the smell of yesterday’s lentil soup. Her husband dips his little finger into a pot of mashed potatoes, then into the mouth of the baby who gulps so quickly that her throat inflates and shrinks.
“Like a boa constrictor,” says my daughter.
“Not so fast,” the giant Nowack murmurs to the baby. “We have plenty for you. Always.”
But the mouth is already open, searching.
“A boa constrictor with teeth,” my daughter says.
“I thought I felt something sharp.” Luzia sticks a finger into the mashed potatoes and feeds the baby. “Isn’t she too young for teeth?”
“She’s almost a year,” Kalle says.
“But she’s so tiny.”
For someone so new in the world, the foundling has an abundance of blue-black curls, uncommon for the coast with its fair-haired people.
“Her mother must be a local girl,” the cook says, “her father some foreigner from down south.”
“Spain, maybe. With that olive skin.” Her husband drops his arm around her.
“Why local?” I ask.
“Because it happened in a local church,” says Luzia The Clown.
Luzia’s dainty wrists make Kalle yearn for Lotte’s strong wrists. He and Lotte started loving each other as children. In fourth grade they promised to marry. Such clarity of knowing had to be a sign they were destined to be together. At sixteen, he was ready to court her but too embarrassed by warts on his fingers. He visited the beekeeper, known for a wart potion he blended in his workroom. After he rubbed it into Kalle’s hands, he wrapped them with gauze, told him to leave it on for thirty-seven hours. That’s how long it took for gauze to absorb the warts. But to keep the warts from finding him again, Kalle had to bury the gauze behind the St. Margaret Home. That’s what he did, though he was up to his shins in cold muck that smelled of something dead. Fish, he assured himself. Not bodies of battle-dead from the German-Danish War a few years before.
He snuck back on the path between the church and the St. Margaret Home where candles flickered behind a stained peacock window. When his warts didn’t reappear, he proposed to Lotte on the tidal flats at sunset—as was tradition—when the tide was out. They married the following October when Lotte turned sixteen. Eventually, they had children and lost children and he left her. Not right away, though. He did try to stay. For days he tried to find his way back to Lotte in their grieving while Wilhelm shrieked.
“The father could be from Italy,” Silvio says.
Herr Ludwig nods vigorously. “Venice. Where your mother grew up, Silvio.” Memories like fireflies alighting briefly … here and here again finding … not just impermanence … but richness, an everlasting glow that exhilarates him. “Our marriage was bliss and harmony.”
The Twenty-Four-Hour Man rolls his eyes, and I elbow him.
“… more than I ever dared dream. Silvio remembers…”
But Silvio pretends not to hear.
“Quite a few dark-haired people live in Holland,” Kalle says. “Like my great-grandparents.”
“Venice,” Herr Ludwig insists. “I knew five dwarfs in Venice.”
“Is she a dwarf?” Heike asks me.
“A beautiful little dwarf.”
The baby flails her short arms and legs.
“Let me,” Kalle says, and when Luzia hands him the baby, it’s like holding a bundle of bubbles—
—a bundle of bubbles—
—his Bärbel all over again—
—belly down on his knees—
—and he lays the foundling across his knees, gently, with her belly down and kneads her back with his thumbs till the gas bubbles pass and he, too, is crying and plummeting into the sorrow he’s fled since the day of the freak wave. He used to remember everything. So why can’t he remember who was next to Lotte when the wave came at them? She has told him. Or has she? What if he imagined she told him? Imagined that the day of the wave he knew but didn’t want to know? The not knowing has blotted the knowing—and all he has left is this uncertainty. Herr Ludwig has told him it was like that for him after his wife Pia fell to her death, and that he thought it would be like that from then on; but his memory came back after a year, sharp as always.
As Kalle lifts the dwarf girl against his chest, the longing for his own children wells up a hundredfold, makes his jaw ache. He hums to her, strokes her wide face. From now on I am part of your story … and you of mine.
Too dim in The Last Supper for others to see his tears, but he hears them say how good he is with babies. And he’s grateful they can recognize that.
The giant Nowack and Luzia line a basket with a blanket. Just for one day, they promise Silvio Ludwig. And keep the dwarf child from one day to the next until it becomes forever. But Luzia’s bliss erases her beauty so that she looks too wholesome, content. Tragedy has abandoned her and she has to paint it—the downturn of lips and eyes—for each performance.
Kalle transforms God’s burning bush on their wagon into Aladdin’s magic lamp. They love his plan to whittle down God, then overlay a harem and carve a little Red Sea between the harem and Moses who is about to part the waters.
“God,” says the giant Nowack, “must be whittled down once in a while.”
“You—” Kalle starts laughing. “And here I thought you were serious.”
“No, you didn’t.” The giant Nowack nudges him with his elbow.
Silvio pretends to be startled whenever he notices the foundling. “You’re still here?”
He carries her to see the dancing dogs. Teaches her to applaud.
“Are they giving you enough to eat?” He shakes his head till a Zwieback falls from it.
Though the child lives with Luzia and the giant Nowack, they all raise her. It’s only natural that they name her after Pia Ludwig, the dazzling high-wire artist.
It so pleases Herr Ludwig. Animates him. “Pia…” he murmurs to the baby and kisses her toes, her fingers. “Fireflies…”
Hans-Jürgen Nowack bends toward him. An ease in that, a generosity. “Tell me about the fireflies, Herr Ludwig.”
The Whirling Nowack Twins arrived at the Ludwig Zirkus just days after me. One Twin is a giant; the other a runt. They audition with the runt on his back, knees bent, and when he raises his bare feet, the giant comes from a running leap to stand on the soles of the runt, who propels him into a headstand, then a dozen somersaults. Graceful and strong, they fly apart and—in less than a heartbeat—land on their knees, side by side, arms spread.
“Excellent,” Herr Ludwig says.
I applaud.
“Usually we start with me juggling him,” the giant explains, “and work up to the more difficult acts. Like this.”
“Our audiences won’t believe Twins,” says Herr Ludwig.
“We’ve never had a problem with that,” declares the runt.
“Once they find a reason to doubt you, they’ll doubt everything our Zirkus does.”
“Not with us,” says the runt.
“Not with the Ludwig Zirkus.” Silvio takes a step toward him.
The two glare at each other like roosters about to strike.
“But—” the runt starts.
Silvio slices one hand through the air. “You’ll find another Zirkus.”
“Cousins, then?” The giant’s voice, mellow. A shelf of eyebrows as if chiseled from wood and not yet finished.
“And are you?” asks Herr Ludwig. “Cousins?”
“Yes,” the runt says without blinking.
“We can do cousins,” says the giant.
“And we can juggle anything.”
“Dogs and torches.”
“Furniture.”
“I’m Oliver,” says the giant.
“I’m Hans-Jürgen.”
Silvio chews on his lip. Glances at his father. Both nod.
“Cousins, then,” says Herr Ludwig. “The Whirling Nowack Cousins.”