Carol Birch - Orphans of the Carnival

‘Old money, you see. You can always tell old money from new. He doesn’t really need to do this, you know, all this show stuff, he does it because he’s got the bug. It gets people like that. Wait until he sees you.’ He laughed shortly, a huffing of breath. ‘Bet he lies awake all night.’

She didn’t go down that night. She went straight to bed. Someone knocked on the door, bringing hot chocolate, Theo carried it in to her and she drank it sitting up against the pillow, watching the snow drift past the window. There’s nowhere further than this, she thought. The other side of the world. She closed her eyes. A dream of heat came, Mexico, drenching sun. Heat came through her palms from the cup she held. When she opened her eyes, she couldn’t focus for a moment, and thought the fire that crackled in the grate was the glowing in the brazier when Cayetano was getting ready to shoe a horse. But then she saw the snow sifting down, finer now like flour, and it was still snowing next morning when she woke, dressed carefully and went down to meet the household. There they stood in a line as if she was royalty or the new mistress, all perfectly prepared: Volkov, his ancient mother and the servants. The mother was a tiny shrivelled thing with watery lips and pale sore-looking eyes, very bent over, leaning on a stick on one side and the arm of a stout maid on the other. There was a housekeeper, a cook, a couple of girls, and Tolya, the tall young man from the night before. Theo, in personable professional mode, did the introduction. Well-trained, he thought. Not one of them showed a flicker. You’d think they met women who looked like apes every day. He got an urge to laugh. She didn’t open for another two weeks. Till then she was under wraps, with only this lot and the Salomansky musicians getting a look. Oh yes, they may look as cool as cucumbers, but look, they’re overjoyed, they’re wild, already they’re thinking in their minds what they’ll say, even though they’ve been sworn to secrecy. You should see her! It’s unbelievable! Just you wait.

She’ll slay them.

The sledge, driven by Tolya, carried them most days between the house and the rehearsal room at the Circus Salomansky. Tucked in with her furs in a shawl that covered her nose and mouth, she was no different from all the other muffled forms carefully picking their ways along the freezing pavements. Theo, in new checked trousers and with perfume in his lengthening side whiskers, wore a habitual smile by her side. She was practising new steps, a Russian dance with two handsome booted male dancers who flattered her shamelessly. Now you are happy, he thought, watching her count time with the pianist, because of me. She works hard. God, she’s come on! At her peak. And with the new costumes. Poor Theo. Poor poor Theo. Such a refrain to have always running in your head. Poor, poor Theo, an idiot high voice nagging on the edge of consciousness, inescapable as the sky, no matter that his face wore its perpetual wry smile and his eyes were soft. Nonsense, nonsense, all is well. But so many voices spoke in his head. What have I done? What woman now would have me, tied to that? If he puts his thing in that he’s not putting it in me. The way they look at me, everyone, all with that same question. Does he actually do it with her?

Yes, he does. He does, and it is altogether compelling. He is obsessed. There’s no doubt revulsion plays a part in it, he doesn’t understand it, why he grows hot and tense and hard even as a shiver of horror shoots along his spine. Everything stands up for her, every hair on his head, every nerve and fibre.

‘Are you all right, Theo?’

She was bending down towards him where he sat, a look of concern on her face.

‘Yes, love,’ he said. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘I don’t know. I thought you looked, I don’t know, sort of serious.’

He laughed. ‘Serious? Me?’

‘Watch my new dance,’ she said, swishing away. ‘Tolya’s been teaching me.’

At Volkov’s she practised her new songs, three Russian, one new from America. Polina, a big friendly girl who brought her hot water in the morning, had been drafted in to help with pronunciation.

‘That’s impossible!’

‘Not at all. Try again.’

Theo, lounging in a chair, crossed his legs and lit up a fat black cigar. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said, ‘an accent can be charming.’

‘And this line?’ Julia asked. ‘This means?’

‘By the edge of the lake where you gave me your hand—’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said again. ‘You don’t have to know what it means, you only have to know the sounds.’

‘I want to know what it means,’ Julia said. ‘How can I give it feeling if I don’t know what it means?’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘happy, sad, whatever the mood. That’s all you need to know.’

Polina, her back to him, made a face, very slight. Silly man, her face said.

There was a knock on the door.

‘Come in!’ called Theo.

Tolya entered backwards with a tray. ‘I’ve brought you some cocoa,’ he said.

‘Oh, lovely!’ She clapped her hands. ‘Just what I want!’

‘Not for me.’ A glass of red wine was on the small table by Theo’s side.

‘Tolya’s a country boy, did you know, Theo. That’s where he learned to dance. Didn’t you, Tolya?’

No conception of how to treat a servant, Theo thought. You’d have thought this was a family friend dropping by. She was much easier with these two than she was with Volkov and the old lady. The crone kept pretty much to her own quarters with her nurse-maid, and Volkov was out at his office a lot of the time, so they didn’t see that much of them anyway, apart from at meal times, which were awkward and protracted.

‘Look! He’s been teaching me.’ She seized the boy and whirled him around, humming some Russian tune he must have taught her.

‘You’re a marvellous dancer,’ Tolya said, ‘such an easy pupil.’ He looked delighted. Well of course, imagine, something to tell the grandchildren about, the time I danced with the eighth wonder of the world. Something you’d never forget, as Theo knew, an armful of sweetly smiling animal, a womanly arm around you, little hand, gardenia, furry brow strokable as a cat’s, lips of an ape, thatched black brow.

‘I have danced with many men,’ Theo heard her say. ‘In Baltimore they were lining up. But you, Tolya, you are the best.’

The boy was pretty and beardless with long fair hair and a ring in his ear. She really liked that young man.

‘Wait till you see all my costumes,’ she was saying to him. ‘How many changes do I have, Theo? Is it five? The kilt, the sailor, the—’

‘Four,’ said Theo.

‘But I will not be coming,’ said Tolya.

‘Why not?’

‘I will be working,’ he said and laughed, dancing backwards, drawing her after him.

‘That’s terrible,’ she said. ‘You must come.’

Look at that, Theo thought. What’s she doing? Is she flirting with him? The way she lifts her face, the way she turns. Is she making a fool of herself? Surely not. But the boy acts charmed, as if she’s a normal girl, and that big lump Polina is clapping her hands and singing along.

‘It really isn’t difficult,’ Julia said, growing breathless.

‘Not for you,’ said the boy.

‘There,’ said Theo, standing, ‘I think it’s time you rested, Julia. Thank you, Tolya. Thank you, Polina.’

‘I’m not tired,’ said Julia. ‘Dance with Polina!’ And she grabbed his arm and the arm of that silly girl and shoved them together, and the girl began to shriek with laughter as if someone was tickling her. It was like dancing with a heaving over-stuffed bolster. Theo didn’t want to seem like a misery, so he whirled her twice round the room to show willing and deposited her by the door. ‘Madame,’ he said gallantly, opening the door, ‘you dance like an angel.’