Our audiences love the Nowacks who amaze you by toppling your expectations. One Nowack is much taller, wider in the chest; the short one barely weighs half as much but has the strongest little legs. Their size difference is extreme, and when they run into the arena on bare feet, you point and shout. No matter how often you’ve seen the performance, you still expect the giant to juggle the runt. The act starts as usual: the short Nowack walks to the center of the arena, lowers himself onto a wide carpet pillow that makes him look even smaller, and lies back, knees bent; except this time he does not raise his legs but lets his knees drop open, turns his face toward Silvio who stands near the curtain, fastens his eyes on Silvio who crosses his arms across his chest, recrosses them, face crimson.
Herr Ludwig flicks his ringmaster whip into the air, twice, before the short Nowack snaps his knees shut and raises his legs, flexes his bare feet so that his soles are parallel to the ground. When the tall Nowack runs toward him, the short Nowack catches him with his soles and launches him into the air, whirls him head to toe, then side to side, a blizzard of motion while the short Nowack lies without motion, except for his soles.
“You keep your eyes on your partner,” Herr Ludwig admonishes him after the performance. “To not do that is dangerous. For him and everyone.”
Late one evening Silvio and I meet at a rathskeller with Luzia The Clown and The Whirling Nowack Cousins. When Luzia orders Bratkartoffeln mit Speck—fried potatoes with bacon—the waiter says it’s too late to prepare warm food.
She scowls. “Nothing will come between me and my Bratkartoffeln.”
“I’ll get you whatever you desire.” The runt winks at her and slips the waiter a ticket. “I used to work for a famous Zirkus, very prestigious—”
“You are embarrassing yourself,” says the giant cousin, voice low as if it came from his toes.
“—and I got them whatever they desired … Not some mud show like this.”
“Tell me more about your prestigious Zirkus.” Silvio leans toward him. Sets his hook. He has an instinct for ausfragen—asking—until nothing is left.
“I have a fiancée,” the waiter hints.
“Congratulations.” The runt sighs and tosses him another ticket, plants his elbows on the table, stretches his jaw forward till his flushed face is a hand’s width from Silvio’s. “This prestigious Zirkus had a dozen big cats and a dozen teams of horses and a dozen—”
“I’m sure those dozens and dozens are more prestigious than our animals.”
“You want any? I’m good at bartering. They have so many animals … I can go to them.”
“What for?”
“For you. Barter.” The runt’s voice turns lazy. “If that’s what you want.”
Silvio shakes his head, dazed. Usually he’s good at spotting an upcoming crisis, takes it out of its wild spin, freezes it, till he can resolve it. But not now. “Barter what for what?”
“For what you want to … offer.”
As Silvio blushes a deeper crimson, I see the heat between those two that I’ve mistaken for hostility.
“Labor,” the runt says. “I’m talking about physical labor.”
Luzia and I glance at each other, and I bite my lip to keep from laughing. She coughs into her fist.
“Whose labor?” Silvio demands.
“Not mine,” says Luzia The Clown.
“Macht Platz!” The waiter yells at us to clear space as he advances with Luzia’s Bratkartoffeln mit Speck.
“Admit it,” I say to Silvio.
He flinches. “Admit what?”
I let him wait. “That you two enjoy fighting.”
“Only about Bratkartoffeln,” the runt explains. “Silvio is mad I didn’t get him any.”
Luzia perches her delicate hand on the giant’s broad wrist, and it’s then that her sadness merges with the giant’s sadness, igniting more bliss than two people can possibly generate. He closes his long eyelids because what he sees is for him alone: Luzia on her bed in his arms, toes just up to his thighs, lips against his throat. A low rumble of his laugh. “You are a beautiful man,” Luzia murmurs, and it doesn’t matter if her voice comes from his longings or from their future.
You are a beautiful man. It’s in the giant’s step when he walks with her from the restaurant; it’s in the way he extends his elbow in case Luzia wants to walk arm in arm. But before she can, the runt slows in front of her so that she has to bump into him.
“I didn’t mean to push you,” she tells the runt.
“Yes, you did. The imprint of your bosom is on my back.”
“Don’t be an Idiot.” Silvio Ludwig butts his shoulder against the runt’s.
Luzia laughs. “I hope that imprint lasts you a lifetime. Because that’s all you’ll get.”
A lifetime. That’s what Luzia and the giant Nowack promise one another—a lifetime of joy and of sadness and of trust, shared. I sew the wedding garments: Luzia wants a gown she can dye and wear as a costume in the arena; the giant Nowack asks for a blue tuxedo. “Midnight-blue.”
“My father’s snoring is getting worse,” Silvio Ludwig mentions the morning after their wedding at breakfast.
“I didn’t sleep all night,” Silvio Ludwig mentions the following day at dinner.
“I’m exhausted,” Silvio Ludwig mentions during rehearsal.
“I don’t want to keep you awake,” his father says.
“You don’t snore on purpose, Vater.”
Every day Silvio bemoans his lack of sleep, the circles around his eyes his proof. But Luzia has a different diagnosis. “Lovesickness.” For weeks, Silvio goes on like this, until his father asks why he doesn’t use the empty bed in The Whirling Nowacks’ wagon. We still call it that though the giant Nowack lives in Luzia’s wagon.
“I haven’t thought of that,” Silvio says.
When I wink at him, he blushes. A terrible liar.
Hans-Jürgen pretends indifference. Shrugs. “No one uses Oliver’s bed.”
“Then Silvio should move in with you,” Herr Ludwig says.
“It’s your Zirkus…”
“Would you mind if Silvio—”
“Your Zirkus.”
“Oliver’s bed is bumpy,” Silvio will complain to his father, to anyone who’ll listen, even Heike.
Luzia and I are sure he doesn’t sleep in Oliver’s bed but is building evidence if his father were to ask.
“Too much evidence,” Luzia warns him.
“You can stack your dishonor against mine,” I tell him. “A lover you can keep a secret; a child you can’t.”