No Stars at the Circus (11 page)

I got up really,
really
quietly and went to the cupboard nearest the cooker, where the Prof kept his sheets and towels. I rooted out some of these and then I sat on the floor and curled up. I pulled a few of the sheets and towels down and wrapped them around me, underneath as well. I wanted it to look as if the linens had fallen out while the Prof was in a mad rush looking for a clean shirt, or something. But I knew it wouldn’t fool the dog.

Then I just sat. If I put my hands over my ears it would block out the noise at the door, but it would be worse not to know what was happening. Suppose they got in and I missed hearing that and then I sneezed? So I waited.

Maybe it wasn’t even me they were after. Maybe the Prof had done something else wrong. Maybe he was a Commie. Papa said the Germans hated Commies nearly as much as they hated Jews. That’s because they’re fighting the Russians now and they’re Commies.

If the police came and took the Prof away what would I do? What would he do? He was so old.

I was breathing so fast I was sucking the sheet into my mouth. I’d no spit left and I really wanted to cough. Then I heard the door being flung open. Boots in the hall. It sounded like there was a whole battalion out there.

I peed a little then, because of the shock, but I managed to stop. I tried to make myself stop shaking too. Towels don’t shake. I tried to breathe through my nose. Then I tried to become invisible.

Signor Corrado says if you do a trick you have to believe in it yourself, totally.

“Do you know why everybody believes my wife looks just like the Mona Lisa, Jonas?” he asked me one day. “It’s because she believes it herself.”

He said an acrobat or a wire walker has to believe they can fly or walk through the air. They have to believe they will never fall. Or else they will.

I had to be a towel or a pillow case that nobody would even notice if they walked into the kitchen, but I didn’t believe it myself. Anyone would see I was a boy. The dog would tell them. And if they had bayonets they could find out for sure.

Then I heard the Prof. He was in the hall too, and he was shouting above the noise of the boots tramping around.

“Who are you? How dare you break into my house!”

He sounded really brave. After all, they must have all had their guns pointed at him. And I’d never have thought he could shout like that. He sounded scary when he should have been scared, like I was.

The boots stopped right where they were, just before they’d reached the steps to the kitchen.

Then someone said, “We apologize, Monsieur. But your neighbours said you weren’t home and this is an emergency. There’s a bad leak on the street and that means trouble with your inflow pipe. If we don’t fix it the street pipe will fail, and so will yours, and your house will be destroyed.”

It was the fire brigade! Not the Germans. Not the police. And the dog that barked must have been just a normal dog walking by who didn’t like all the racket.

But what could I do now? I couldn’t come out because the firemen would know there was a boy in hiding, someone who didn’t answer the door even when someone else was battering it down. And the poor Prof standing out there in the hall didn’t even know where I was.

But he was smart. He guessed I’d stayed in the kitchen. I don’t know how. That Prof was as smart as any spy.

He said, “Give me one minute to move a few things I have in the kitchen.”

I didn’t move, even when I heard his step. Then he was right beside me. He picked me up carefully and threw me across his shoulder and then he reached in for more sheets and put them over me so that they hung down. Then we were out in the hall and we were going up the stairs and he said, “Go right ahead, gentlemen. And thank you for allowing me to save my wife’s best linen.”

He brought me up to his room, set me down on the bed and lifted the sheets and towels from me. He kept one finger stuck to his lips. Not that I needed to be told
that
. Then he pointed me towards his wardrobe. I climbed into it and he piled the linens in on top of me.

“Stay brave, Jonas,” he whispered. Then he was off downstairs again.

I took the sheets away from my face. I could breathe again, just about, even though there was a fur coat brushing against my face and tickling me. It was very dark in the wardrobe and there was nothing to hear.

I think I fell asleep then, which was a pretty stupid thing to do because if anyone had opened the wardrobe they’d have seen my face shining out of the dark like a moon. But I woke up when the Prof touched my shoulder and told me I could come out.

“They’ve gone, Jonas. They’ve managed to shore up the leak too. It’s all right, it’s just a bit damp down there. We’ll take care of it after we get something to eat.”

When I came out my legs were too wobbly to work properly. Jean-Paul and I used to make our legs go all shaky when we were playing soldiers and falling down on the ground and dying. But it isn’t funny when it’s real and you can’t control it.

The Prof told me to take my time so I sat down on the bedroom floor and stretched out my legs and gave them a good bashing with my fists, the way I’d seen Signor Corrado and La Giaconda do every Sunday afternoon before the circus opened. Then my legs were all right again and I was able to walk downstairs without falling.

The Prof didn’t say anything cross to me. He made us both some strong coffee. He put honey into it to make it sweet. He said if he’d had any brandy he’d have used that too, even for me.

“I wasn’t able to get cheese, after all,” he said. “But look – chicken livers!”

He fried the liver with some flat rissoles he’d made with leftover turnips. He says there are women in the queues who tell him how to cook things, just because he’s a man. But they’ve got no idea what a good cook he is. I wonder if Mama knew that about him.

He’d bought a newspaper too, which he didn’t usually do because he said they were rubbish. Papa said the same thing but sometimes he picked one up so we’d have something to light the fire with afterwards. Anyway, the Prof read his paper and let me eat.

The encyclopedia was where I’d left it, open at the eels. It was lucky it hadn’t fallen off onto the floor because the whole room was really wet under our feet, just as bad as a street gets after it rains really hard. There were even some deep puddles. Bad tiling, the Prof said.

When he’d read his newspaper he threw sheets of it down to soak up the worst puddles. That’s when I saw the date. It was 15 October. I’d forgotten to count.
Again
.

My birthday. I am ten.

I didn’t say anything to the Prof because he’d get all embarrassed and start thinking he should get a cake for me, or something else that was impossible. I’d been wondering if the Corrados would get a card in the post for me, from Mama and Papa. But if they had, surely Signor Corrado would have delivered it.

I wanted a card more than anything. Because today it’s exactly three months since I saw my family. And if what happened on that day hadn’t happened, I’d be with them now, wherever they are. We’d all be together and they’d know it was my birthday and it wouldn’t matter that there wasn’t any cake or presents or stuff.

The Prof said he was going to knock at the good neighbour’s door and see if there was a mop or some cloths he could borrow. Then we’d mop up the kitchen, just the two of us, and when that was done he was going to get a locksmith to come and fix the door. I’d have to go back to the attic.

So that’s what we did on 15 October 1942. We cleaned up the big mess in the kitchen and then I went upstairs to my room.

Outside on the street the firemen had left some pipes lying around. I saw a delivery van from the Bon Marché store coming along, pulled by two big grey horses. When the horses saw the pipes they wouldn’t go any further, even though the driver used his big whip on them. He had to climb down and pull out a hamper from the van and walk. I couldn’t see which number he knocked at but it was a few houses down. The Prof must have some really rich neighbours if they get deliveries like that.

Before it got completely dark I tore out a page from this notebook and made a birthday card for myself. It didn’t say anything very much because I don’t know what my family is doing right now. This is all it says:

“To our beloved Jonas on the occasion of his tenth birthday from his mama and papa, and also from his dear sister Nadia.”

The first part is what our parents always put on our birthday cards. I just added Nadia this time because I didn’t want her to feel left out.

On the inside I drew a cartoon of my fleas. Only instead of pulling carriages they were marching in a band. Athos had a trumpet, Porthos a big drum sitting on his fat tummy, and Aramis a triangle that had two crotchets jumping out of it. Drawing the cartoon cheered me up, though I bet Mama wouldn’t have liked it as much as I did.

We never had any visitors in rue des Lions. Except for Giselle Bauer, of course, and she doesn’t count. Papa went out on his own if he wanted to meet someone and Mama never went out at all, except with us and Papa, or to the shops to queue for food. On Sundays Signor Corrado or Alfredo called for me and brought me home again but they never came inside.

But on the morning of 15 July, Mama came into the room where Nadia and I slept. She shook me awake.

“Hurry up, Jonas, and go downstairs. Signor Corrado is knocking at the door for you and calling out like a madman.”

Signor Corrado! But I’d been helping him just the day before. It was a Tuesday, not a Sunday, but that’s because Tuesday was the 14 July holiday. There were two shows, not just one. We’d never had such a busy day. Everybody said the summer had come at last.

“People just want to come out of their sad little rooms and have some fun,” said La Giaconda. “Let’s pull out all the stops!”

So we did. For both shows. I made quite a bit of money with my flea circus that day.

There were only two things that weren’t good. The first was that Tommaso had been tired. He said he was too tired to help me and too tired to play football. Which was really odd, for
him
.

The other was that I’d seen the pimply man again, the one who wanted to clear Mama and Papa out. He was marching up and down the pathway alongside the circus, sticking out his arm and shouting German words to anyone who looked at him. There was no policeman to get rid of him this time. But Signor Corrado said not to worry, he was just a nuisance, like a wasp. In the end he went off somewhere with his gang.

I pulled my shorts on and ran downstairs. Someone had let Signor Corrado into the hall and he was just starting up the stairs. He grabbed my hands and held them.

“Jonas, please, please will you come and help us?” he said. “Tommaso asked for you to come. He has to go back to hospital but he won’t go unless you come too. He’s sore in his head and he’s very weak. Please go and ask your parents. But hurry.”

He looked really pale, and Signor Corrado
never
looked pale. He followed me back upstairs. Mama had a pot of water on the stove for the awful coffee but he shook his head. He told Mama and Papa about Tommaso.

“It’s his mastoid again,” he said. “He was in terrible pain last night. Now the pain is gone and he’s just weak but he wants Jonas. He says he won’t go to the hospital without him.”

“But surely the hospital won’t let Jonas in, Signor,” Mama said. I knew from the way she spoke that she didn’t want me going to the Corrados’ again so soon.

It was Papa who said I should go. “He doesn’t have to go to the hospital at all, my dear,” he said to Mama. “He only has to coax Tommaso to go. If anyone can coax a body to do something our Jonas can.”

Papa
said that about
me
. I could hardly believe it.

“Take my bike,” he said to Signor Corrado. “Keep it. I can’t use it since we’ve had to wear these things.” He meant the yellow stars.

Mama told me to put a clean shirt on and to wash my face and hands. They both came downstairs with us. Mama wasn’t a bit pleased but she hugged me like a bear, really tight. They shook hands with Signor Corrado and then we were up on the bike, me on the crossbar.

I could see the stupid Kamynski girls at the window, laughing and pointing, but I ignored them. What did they know about anything? They never even went out. I looked up but Nadia wasn’t at our window. She was still in bed. She hadn’t heard Mama come in. She was probably dreaming about Puss in Boots or d’Artagnan.

Signor Corrado pushed the pedals down and we began to wobble off. Then Mama suddenly gave a little cry. “Wait! Please! Just one minute!”

She ran back into the house. Poor Signor Corrado looked desperate but Mama took no time at all. She had a little flat card in her hand. “Take this,” she said to me. “I meant to give you this before now. If anything goes wrong this dear man will help you.”

I put the card in my pocket. I didn’t even look at it. Then we started out again. And Signor Corrado rode like he had a yellow jersey on, not at all like poor Papa who had to stop all the time just to get his breath back.

Tommaso was in his bunk-bed inside the van. He had a wet bandage wound round his head and for some reason a black patch over one eye. He looked exactly like Filochard from my
Pieds nickelés
comics but of course I didn’t say that.

La Giaconda was holding his hands but she got up to kiss me. Then she made me stand where Tommaso could see me with his one eye, without having to move his head. She said that hurt him.

“Bambino, here’s our dear Jonas come to see you,” she said. “Now, you listen to him and do what he says. He’s a clever boy.”

Do what
I
said! That would never happen in our family. We just did what we were told. But I did my best. I told Tommaso that the hospital would fix him up just like they’d done with Nadia.

“They’ll have nice food, maybe even ice cream. They want everyone to get better quickly.”

I could see by the look he gave me he thought this was just a big lie. It’s funny that even one eye can let you know that much. So I tried harder. I promised him all my comics, but he didn’t even blink. I tried to think of everything Tommaso liked. Then I remembered the best thing. I went right over to the bed so he couldn’t miss what I said.