Erin Morgenstern - The Night Circus

Bailey attempts to argue but Lorena stops him.

“He is terribly stubborn,” she whispers. “He will not take no for an answer once he has set his mind to something.”

And indeed, Bailey is swept into their carriage almost as soon as they step off the train. His bag is taken along with Elizabeth’s luggage when they reach the hotel.

“Is something wrong?” Lorena asks as he openly stares around the opulent lobby.

“I feel like one of those girls in fairy tales, the ones who don’t even have shoes and then somehow get to attend a ball at the castle,” Bailey whispers, and she laughs so loudly that several people turn and stare.

Bailey is escorted to a room half the size of his entire house but he finds he cannot sleep, despite the heavy curtains blocking out the sunlight. He paces the room until he begins worrying about damaging the carpet, and then he sits in the window instead, watching the people below.

He is relieved when there is a knock at the door midafternoon.

“Do you know where the circus is yet?” he asks, before Victor can even speak.

“Not yet, dear boy,” he says. “We sometimes have advance notice of where it is headed but not as of late. I imagine we will have word by the end of the day, and if our luck holds we will depart first thing in the morning. Do you have a suit?”

“Not with me,” Bailey says, remembering the suit packed in a trunk at home that was only ever pulled out for special occasions. He guesses he has likely outgrown it in the interim, unable to recall exactly what the last suit-worthy occasion was.

“We shall get you one, then,” Victor says, as though this is as simple a thing as picking up a newspaper.

They meet Lorena in the lobby and the two of them drag him around town on a number of errands, including a stop at a tailor for his suit.

“No, no,” Lorena says while they look at samples. “These are entirely wrong for his coloring. He needs a grey. A nice deep grey.”

After a great deal of pinning and measuring, Bailey ends up with a nicer suit than he has ever owned in his life, nicer even than his father’s best suit, in a charcoal grey. Despite his protestations Victor also buys him very shiny shoes and a new hat.

The reflection in the mirror looks so different from the one he is accustomed to that Bailey has difficulty believing it is really him.

They return to the Parker House with a multitude of packages in tow, stopping by their rooms for hardly enough time to sit before Elizabeth comes to take them down to dinner.

To Bailey’s surprise, there are almost a dozen rêveurs waiting in the restaurant downstairs, some who will be following the circus and others who are remaining in Boston. His anxiety at the fanciness of the restaurant is eased by the casual, boisterous manner of the group. True to form, they are clad almost entirely in black and white and grey with bright touches of red on ties or handkerchiefs.

When Lorena realizes that Bailey has no red, she surreptitiously removes a rose from a nearby floral arrangement to tuck in his lapel.

There are endless stories from the circus related over each course, mentions of tents Bailey has never seen and countries he has never even heard of. Bailey mostly listens, still rather astounded that he has stumbled upon a group of people who love the circus as much as he does.

“Do you… do you think anything is wrong with the circus?” Bailey asks quietly, when the table has fallen into separate conversations. “Recently, I mean?”

Victor and Lorena glance at each other as though gauging who should respond, but it is Elizabeth who answers first.

“It has not been the same since Herr Thiessen died,” she says. Victor frowns suddenly while Lorena nods in agreement.

“Who is Herr Thiessen?” Bailey asks. The three of them look somewhat surprised by his ignorance.

“Friedrick Thiessen was the first of the rêveurs ,” Elizabeth says. “He was a clockmaker. He made the clock inside the gates.”

“That clock was made by someone outside the circus? Really?” Bailey asks. It is not something he had ever thought to ask Poppet and Widget about. He had assumed it was a thing born of the circus itself. Elizabeth nods.

“He was a writer as well,” Victor says. “That is how we met him, years and years ago. Read an article he wrote about the circus and sent him a letter and he wrote back and so on. That was before we were even called rêveurs .”

“He made me a clock that looks like the Carousel,” Lorena says, looking wistful. “With little creatures that loop through clouds and silver gears. It is a wonderful thing, I wish I could carry it around with me. Though it is nice to have a reminder of the circus I can keep at home.”

“I heard he had a secret romance with the illusionist,” Elizabeth remarks, smiling over her glass of wine.

“Gossip and nonsense,” Victor scoffs.

“He did always sound very fond of her in his writing,” Lorena says, as though she is considering the possibility.

“How could anyone not be fond of her?” Victor asks. Lorena turns to look at him curiously. “She is extremely talented,” he mumbles, and Bailey catches Elizabeth trying not to laugh.

“And the circus isn’t the same without this Herr Thiessen?” Bailey asks, wondering if this has something to do with what Poppet had told him.

“It is different without him, for us, of course,” Lorena says. She pauses thoughtfully before she continues. “The circus itself seems a bit different as well. Nothing in particular, only something… ”

“Something off-kilter,” Victor interjects. “Like a clock that is not oscillating properly.”

“When did he die?” Bailey asks. He cannot bring himself to ask how.

“A year ago tonight, as a matter of fact,” Victor says.

“Oh, I had not realized that,” Lorena says.

“A toast to Herr Thiessen,” Victor proposes, loud enough for the entire table to hear, and he raises his glass. Glasses are lifted all around the table, and Bailey raises his as well.

The stories of Herr Thiessen continue through dessert, interrupted only by a discussion about why the cake is called a pie when it is clearly cake. Victor excuses himself after finishing his coffee, refusing to weigh in on the cake issue.

When he returns to the table, he has a telegram in his hand.

“We are headed to New York, my friends.”

After the illusionist takes her bow and disappears before her rapt audience’s eyes, they clap, applauding the empty air. They rise from their seats and some of them chatter with their companions, marveling over this trick or that as they file out the door that has reappeared in the side of the striped tent.

One man, sitting in the inner circle of chairs, remains in his seat as they leave. His eyes, almost hidden in the shadow cast by the brim of his bowler hat, are fixed on the space in the center of the circle that the illusionist occupied only moments before.

The rest of the audience departs.

The man continues to sit.

After a few minutes, the door fades into the wall of the tent, invisible once more.

The man’s gaze does not waver. He does not so much as glance at the vanishing door.

A moment later, Celia is sitting in a chair across the circle from him, still dressed as she had been during her performance, in a black gown covered with delicate white lace.

“You usually sit in the back,” she says.

“I wanted a better view,” Marco says.

“You came quite a ways to be here.”

“I had to take a holiday.”

Celia looks down at her hands.

“You didn’t expect me to come all this way, did you?” Marco asks.