The Orphan's Tale

by Pam Jenoff

Keep your eyes down, that has been the lesson of the years of war. No good ever came from noticing the business of others.

Our two circuses had grown up alongside one another like siblings in separate bedrooms.

The circus is a great equalizer, though; no matter class or race or background, we are all the same here, judged on our talent.

The night sky is filled with stars and for a second it seems that each is for one of the infants on the train.

Astrid’s is a smooth, unbroken canvas of olive, like a lake on a day without wind.

sometimes one question can feel like a thousand—like

But we represent everything Hitler hates: the freaks and oddities in a regime that is all about conformity. They will not permit us to go on forever.

Would the circus fade into history, as well? Though no one speaks of it, I sometimes wonder if we are marching toward extinction with each performance, too busy dancing and flying through the air to see it.

The circus had always brought light to the places it visited. Now it is a lifeline.

There have been circuses from the times of the Romans and Greeks, our traditions centuries old. We had survived the Middle Ages, the Napoleonic Wars, the Great War. We would survive this, too.

pulling the shorter poles into place, and the whole thing seems to rise like a phoenix from the ashes,

These are the lucky ones who can afford to forget for a few hours the hardships beyond the tent flaps.

You love the people they were before, below all the awfulness that made them do this thing, you know?”

“One day you may feel differently,” she replies. “Sometimes our forever life does not last as long as we think.”

His kind of courage was boundless, though, and he would not have turned away a person in need, whether a star performer or a simple laborer or a child such as Theo with no skills at all. It was not about the circus or family connections, but human decency.

“We cannot change who we are. Sooner or later we will all have to face ourselves.”

“but our actions have consequences. Good intentions won’t save us from that.”

Until recently, the circus has been a haven from the war, like being inside a snow globe while the world continues outside. But the walls are thinning.

Nowhere is safe anymore.

“It’s hard when the people we love do awful things,” I offer.

These days, the unexpected can only mean trouble.

And Emmet is not a fighter; he would always choose the course of least resistance.

The suggestion belies how little he knows about what we do. Even I understand the manpower and expertise that are needed.

She smiles faintly and holds her tarot deck up to me, an offering. But I shake my head. I no longer want to see the future.

the crews begin tearing down the circus. Unlike the raising of the big top, its demise is anticlimactic, a sight nobody wants to see. Poles clank as they fall upon one another and the canvas begins to collapse like a parachute billowing to the earth. The enormous tent, once full of people and laughter, is gone as though it was never there at all.

Bless her, she tries so very hard to care for me. Her concern is a drop of water, though, unable to fill the ocean of void in my heart.

“Let’s go practice,” Noa urges, still trying for all her best to make things better. It doesn’t help at all, but I love her for caring. “Astrid, I know how hard this is. But lying here isn’t going to change things. Why not fly again?” Because doing the normal things feels like accepting that Peter is gone, I think. A betrayal. “What’s the point?” I ask finally.

It is not about joy now, though, but survival.

Save her, Peter’s eyes had seemed to say in those final minutes before he was taken. But how? Even if I feed her, make her drink, her spirit is gone. I can barely care for Theo and myself—under the weight of all three of us, I will break.

She clings to him like a buoy at sea, seeming to draw strength from his tiny body.

Somewhere a tiny part of our family’s circus dynasty persists, like a seed carried to a new land to be planted.

He had thought of everything to make sure I could get out of the occupied territories and reach safety with Jules. Had Erich done it out of guilt or love? Though it is a part of my past before Peter, so long ago it seems almost like a dream, part of me cannot help but ache for the man who cared enough to do all of this, but not enough to fight for us.

Air raids are nothing new; they have come since the start of the war, first by the Germans to weaken countries they wanted to occupy and more recently by the Allies on German territories. They come in crude bold strokes, not caring who might be in the way.

The circus is gone; the fire has undone what war could not.