CHAPTER TEN

Vita spent the afternoon memorising the city. She walked, first home, for toast with ketchup. Grandpa was preparing to sleep, upright in a chair in his bedroom. ‘The night,’ he had said, when Vita asked, ‘is become something of a giant. I seem unable to defeat it. But I sleep in snatches during the day, and that’s more than enough for me.’

Then Vita walked, slowly, painfully, across half of Manhattan; over 57th Street, and down Fifth Avenue towards Madison Square Park. She was trying to fix her paper map of New York in her head: just in case. There was no telling, she thought, when it might be useful.

She returned to the apartment at tea-time, and let herself in as silently as possible. She did not call out, in case her grandfather was still asleep. Nothing seemed amiss until she reached her bedroom; and then the hairs rose on the back of her neck like a cornered cat.

Someone had been in her room.

Nothing had been ransacked – everything was impeccably neat – but her book was in a different place on the window sill, and her bed had been unmade and remade, with the blanket the wrong way up. Panic wrapped around her, and she threw open the wardrobe; there was nobody there, only her neatly folded jerseys and stockings. She looked under the bed. Nothing; except … the dust had been swept away, as if by a groping hand.

She ran to check the kitchen, the drawing room. There was so little furniture that it was almost impossible to tell, but someone had been there, soft-footed and silent. Vita thought of the ring, secure inside the hem of her skirt, and felt her heart pound in her ears.

She should go to the police; she should tell someone. But Westerwicke was the police: even though he was retired, it was too enormous a risk. And if she told her mother, she would change their tickets for the first boat home. Which left Grandpa. She tried to picture telling him, and knew, immediately, from the shooting pain in her chest, that Grandpa mustn’t know. He would blame himself, and that was unthinkable.

Vita crossed to the kitchen and got out the ketchup bottle. She ate a spoonful, to give herself sugar, and courage. She would ask her mother to double-lock the door at night, and she would tell no one. And, in the meantime, she had a date with the circus.

It had all started quietly enough; legally enough, even. Vita had mentioned, the previous night under the moonlit trapeze, that she had never actually seen a circus.

The two boys looked at her, then at each other. It was as if she had said she had never seen the sky.

‘You don’t really mean it?’ said Samuel. ‘You don’t mean it literally?’

‘How could I have metaphorically not seen a circus?’

‘Right,’ said Arkady. There was an edge of panic in his voice. ‘We have to fix this! Tomorrow night – there’s a show at seven!’

‘Wonderful!’ said Vita, but she hesitated. Nothing about the shine and glow of Carnegie Hall suggested it would be cheap. ‘How … much will it be?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Samuel. ‘We’ll sneak you in.’

Vita’s mother was still not home when Vita crept out of the apartment that night. She left a note, saying she was going to the circus – she did not say with whom – and would be back by bedtime. She knew there would be fury on her return, but that was then, and this was now, and this was the circus.

The two boys stood under the flag, waiting. A young man was handing out leaflets; a single sheet, printed with a newspaper article. ‘Rave reviews!’ he called. ‘Read our rave reviews in the New York Times!’

Samuel beckoned the boy over, took one, and handed it to Vita. ‘Here,’ he said in greeting. ‘Souvenir.’

She read it out loud. ‘Circus in Carnegie Hall! Elephants, ponies, dogs, and other familiar attractions of the tanbark …’ She broke off. ‘What’s a tanbark?’

‘Small pieces of bark,’ said Samuel. ‘You know – the stuff they use to cover the floor of the circus ring.’

Vita kept reading. ‘– of the tanbark, will be seen in Carnegie Hall this season with the presentation there of a genuine indoor circus.’

‘Good, no?’ said Arkady. ‘The New York Times! Papa was so happy he framed it and put one in every room – even the toilet.’

‘Let’s go,’ said Samuel.

Vita pushed the leaflet into her pocket and stepped towards the main entrance, but Arkady gave a bark of laughter.

‘Not that way!’ he said. ‘We have to go in the stage door.’

‘What?’

‘Well, we don’t have tickets! We don’t get them free – who do you think we are, Rockefellers?’

Samuel led the way around the corner to the side of the building.

‘Did you get the blueprint?’ he asked, as he nodded at the doorman.

‘Yes,’ said Vita. ‘I copied it into my book.’

‘Good,’ he said, ‘you can show us after the show,’ and he led her up a flight of steep stairs. They made no mention of her foot, but, near the top, Samuel offered her his hand. She grinned at him but did not take it.

At the top of the stairs was a door in green baize. Samuel stood back. ‘After you.’

Vita pushed the door open, and found herself in another country.

The lights were bright, and the air smelt of perfume, and chalk, and hot human bodies. A young Japanese woman stood on her hands in the corridor, scratching the back of her head with a toe. Everywhere people hurried to and fro, squeezing past each other; every face was painted, and every person was clothed in a riot of exquisite silk and sequins.

Three women wearing leotards moved Arkady bodily aside, laughing in what Vita thought was Spanish.

‘This way,’ said Samuel.

Vita wanted to stop and stare, and stare, but Arkady caught hold of her hand and pulled her towards a high-ceilinged dark space.

‘Here!’ said Arkady, triumphant. Carnegie Hall, Vita saw, did not have wings like a traditional circus; instead, a wide door on each side led out on to the stage. Arkady pointed. ‘We stand here, just by the door! We’ll be able to see everything!’

A voice, Russian-accented, came from behind them. ‘Arkady! What are you doing here?’ A tall man with a bulbous nose glared down at them. ‘Didn’t I tell you last time, boys, you’re blocking the way?’

‘We just want to watch,’ said Samuel softly.

‘Who’s this?’ The man jerked an eyebrow at Vita.

‘She’s my friend.’ Arkady was turning red. ‘Vita, this is my uncle. He’s the acting stage manager. She’s never seen a circus, Uncle Yvgeny!’

‘I can’t have you …’ he began, but then he saw Vita’s face. Her eyes, looking about her, were hot with wonder. His eyes flickered down to her foot.

‘I see,’ he said, more gently. He dragged three chairs over and positioned them just outside the door. Vita smiled the third of her six smiles. ‘Here. Sit still in these, don’t make noise, and it’ll probably be OK.’

The lights were beginning to dim, and the young woman from the corridor came and stood just outside the door. She rubbed the back of her neck, and winked at Vita.

‘That’s Maiko,’ said Samuel. ‘She’s the lead tumbler.’ His voice was full of awe. ‘She trained with Nikitin himself.’

A man, dark-haired and long-legged, in a top hat and a black dinner jacket, strode on to the stage and addressed the audience.

‘That’s my father,’ said Arkady. There was pride in his voice, and a shadow of resentment.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome!’ said Arkady’s father. ‘Welcome to the Lazarenko Circus! We hope tonight to show you that the world is more strange and wild than you knew: that the human body is the wonder to end all wonders! All we ask is that you watch – and marvel.’

Arkady snorted. ‘He says the same thing every night. He doesn’t like change.’

The band struck up, and Maiko ran on to the stage to a roar of applause. She back-flipped, loose-limbed and casual, across the floor. Samuel sighed, and the sigh was not for the girl herself but for the ease with which she swept aside the earth’s gravitational pull.

Two men ran on: one took her arms and another her feet, and they began to sweep her in wide circles. Another, taller woman spun on to the stage, and began to skip over and under Maiko’s falling and rising body.

It was, Vita thought, beauty of a wilder and more vagabond kind than ballet.

Samuel’s eyes were as wide as Vita’s. Long silks came down from the ceiling, and Maiko swung up and down them as easily as crossing the road, spinning and twisting, and Samuel leaned so far forward he nearly fell out of his seat.

‘We’ve seen the show at least three times a week,’ whispered Arkady, jerking his head at Samuel, ‘for years, and always, always, he’s like that, when she flies.’

Maiko ran off stage and Samuel sat back up and rubbed his eyes. A single file of poodles marched on stage, followed by Arkady’s mother, a tall, stern-faced woman with a large bosom. The dogs leaped in and out of golden hoops, then over one another.

‘Are those real gold?’ said Vita.

‘No, of course not! Just painted cardboard,’ said Arkady. ‘When I have my own troupe, I won’t have hoops – nothing that makes them look foolish. My whole orchestra will be made from birdsong, and people will come from all over the world.’

The dogs were followed by an escape artist, a small Polish man who smiled half a smile while he was dunked in water with his arms padlocked behind him. He was followed by a tightrope walker in a silver leotard. Then Arkady sat up, his back straight.

‘Here it is!’ he said. ‘Watch this!’

A fine-boned man strode on to the stage. Behind him came a line of horses, led by Moscow, her gleaming flank polished with gold dust to make her shine. Vita gasped at the sight of her.

‘This is the best part,’ said Arkady. ‘The liberty act. That’s Morgan Kawadza!’

‘Kawadza?’ Vita turned to Samuel, ‘So he’s your—’

‘My uncle, yes,’ said Samuel; and then he was on his feet and walking backwards, into the darkness of the wings, out of sight of the man on stage.

‘He’s the best in the world,’ said Arkady. ‘My father nearly cried with happiness when he agreed to join the company. He trained with the Lipizzaners in Vienna.’

‘The what?’

‘The Lipizzaners! They’re the cleverest horses in the world – they were bred to be ridden by Emperors. But watch! You mustn’t even blink!’

A waltz began to play. Kawadza clicked his tongue, and called out. The language was not English. ‘He taught the horses in English and in Shona – the language in Mashonaland,’ whispered Arkady. ‘And Moscow speaks Russian, too, of course – I taught her.’

The horses began to dance, moving backwards and side to side to the music.

‘Watch Moscow. She’s perfect,’ said Arkady. ‘There’s no horse like her. She’s a Lipizzan.’

Moscow reared up and walked several steps on her hind legs, whinnying in triumph, then turned a slow pirouette. Kawadza called out to her, telling her she was a queen among horses, that he was proud of her.

‘One day soon, Moscow will belong to Samuel,’ said Arkady, and he said it in the way that people might say, ‘One day, he’ll be King.’

The act came to an end, and Kawadza swung himself on to Moscow’s back and rode her off stage, to hysterical applause.

Kawadza caught sight of Arkady and stopped. ‘Hi, Ark. Where’s Sam?’ He swung down from Moscow’s back. ‘Wasn’t he just here?’

Arkady was red; the stress of being spoken to by his hero had turned his ears purple. He swallowed. ‘Yes, sir. He must have gone to the bathroom, sir.’

‘Not still dreaming about that flying, is he?’ The man’s accent was stronger than Samuel’s; it had a rich burr to it, and his vowels stretched out long over his tongue.

Arkady swallowed harder. He seemed to be trying to masticate a toad. ‘No, sir.’

‘Good. I’ve told him – and I’m telling you, so you can remind him – he doesn’t have a choice. Do you hear me?’

‘I hear you, sir,’ whispered Arkady.

Kawadza glanced out at the audience, rustling in its rich silks and satins. His voice was rough. ‘I met a man on the boat coming over – he wanted to be a dancer; he could leap six feet from standing. They looked him over, and they laughed: there could never be a Black prince in the ballet. No. The world isn’t generous with its imagination to people of my skin: it has already decided what we are. And Samuel is a child. It’s my job to protect him from disappointment.’

Vita’s chest tightened, and she said, ‘But—’

He shook his head, quick and hard and sad. ‘There can be no but.’ Moscow whinnied, and he raised a hand to her flank. ‘And anyway, there’s no future in tumbling! So he can turn a cartwheel. It’s not enough. He’ll waste his time on cheap tricks, the world will turn on him and break his heart, and he’ll be left with nothing. And without him, who’s going to carry on the act when I’m gone? He’ll join me with the horses when he’s fourteen.’ And Morgan Kawadza sighed, looked around once more for Samuel, and strode away, Moscow following.

There was a long pause, in which Vita could think only of Samuel, swinging from the crossbar of the trapeze, his face shining. She made her hands into fists inside her pockets.

Then the band started again, and under cover of the noise Samuel slipped back into his seat.

‘Your uncle was just here –’ began Vita in a whisper.

‘I know. I was behind the fire-eater’s buckets.’ His whole body was rigid; his shoulders stood up near his ears.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Fine.’ He forced a smile. ‘You should watch – it’s Lady Lavinia next.’

A beautiful woman, her dark hair falling to her waist, dressed in a sweep of black silk, her fingers covered in scars, came on stage from the other side of the wings. She carried a handful of knives.

‘You don’t want to meet her in a dark alley,’ said Samuel. ‘Look!’

Lady Lavinia began by juggling four knives. The audience gasped and cheered, and she grinned out at the stage lights and laughed: the laugh of a virtuoso pianist applauded for playing a scale. She added three more knives, then another four, and five more, until there were sixteen knives spinning in the air. She caught them behind her back, spun a knife as long as her arm on her fingertip. She threw apples and knives into the air and then caught them as they fell, the apples neatly halved. The crowd’s applause grew deafening.

Vita gripped her chair until the plush cladding peeled away under her fingers. A great spurt of longing rose up in her. It must feel astonishing, to know how to do that, to make a moving object curve through the air according to your will, she thought. And it was followed by another thought, one so quiet and new it barely made its way to the surface of her mind. I could do that.

Lady Lavinia retreated. ‘There’s just the elephant still to come,’ said Arkady.

‘An elephant! That must be amazing.’

Arkady shook his head. ‘He’s beautiful, yes – so beautiful it hurts – but elephants aren’t like the dogs. I wish my father wouldn’t have them, but he says you need it for the crowds.’

‘Why?’

‘The dogs are artistes. They want to work – they want to play. The elephants just want to go home. I’ve told him and told him, but he won’t listen.’

‘How do you know the elephant doesn’t want to work?’

‘I feel it – here,’ and he struck his chest. And then he grinned, embarrassed, and turned to watch the stage.

The stage at Carnegie Hall was large – broad enough to hold forty men, shoulder to shoulder. The greatest musicians in the world, Vita knew, had walked across its wooden boards. But it was suddenly dwarfed, rendered small and flimsy and mundane, by the animal that came stepping out of the door on the far side of the stage.

It was bedecked with ribbons; a red silk cloth was laid over its back, and a gold triangle of silk draped down between its eyes. Somebody had pierced one of its ears with small gold hoops, once at the top and once at the bottom, and a filigree gold chain swung to and fro between the hoops. A silver chain ran between its two front feet. A long thin man, carrying a long thin stick, followed behind, his bald head shining with sweat.

The elephant stood, looking out at the audience, and extended its trunk into the air, as if groping for something. The crowd hushed.

The man shouted an order, and the elephant reared up on its two hind feet, trumpeted, and came crashing down again. The floorboards shook. Splinters spat across the stage; Samuel covered his face with his elbow, and Vita dodged to the left as one flew past her right eye.

Arkady whispered something under his breath that Vita felt confident was not polite.

The man shouted another order, but the elephant did not move. The man shouted again. The elephant stayed where it was, its eyes studying the theatre; the painted ceiling, the rows of watching, hungry faces. Its eyes, which were closer to gold than brown, closed.

Vita felt her own eyes unexpectedly prickling, and the bridge of her nose swelling in the way it did before tears, and she scowled, hard, at her left foot, to banish the water rising in her. The image behind her eyes was not of Carnegie Hall, but of Grandpa, stooped and shackled by something she couldn’t see.

The man reached out with the stick; its end caught the light, and Vita saw with a lurch that it wasn’t wood at the tip, but knife-sharp iron. It wasn’t clear what had happened, but the elephant bellowed, rose to its feet, and reared up to stand on a single hind leg.

The audience whooped and cheered. The man bowed. The elephant was led off stage, back the way it had come, out of the harsh light, and into the dark of the wings.

The house lights rose, and the audience broke into loud chatter. Vita moved to look around the edge of the door into the auditorium, watching the riot of silk skirts flap as the seats emptied. She was just about to ask if she could meet the elephant when her breath halted halfway up her chest.

A man was getting to his feet in one of the boxes, offering his hand to a blonde woman dressed in a dusty-pink gown. He turned, and his eyes met Vita’s as she stood, half on and half off the stage.

The man was Victor Sorrotore.