It was not long before their act began to draw, began to bring people in, began actually to increase attendance. A marked increase, commented Matt Mulhollan to Sizzy, during one of their regular late-evening conferences over a few beers and a little habitual sex. A steady, marked increase.
Sizzy passed this along to the twins. When they began to preen a little, she said, “Now, don’t go feeling important. Sure, you’re a draw. Anything new is a draw. But you’re not the main event. You’re in the sideshow, not under the big top. It doesn’t do to puff yourselves up too much, because you’d just be setting up for a fall. Remember, no matter how classy you think your act is, there’s always something bigger and classier coming along!”
Matt Mulhollan, who was no fool despite having been a little down on his luck recently, plowed most of the increased income back into the business. He bought new costumes. He repaired equipment. He added some acts he’d been unable to afford previously. Almost as an afterthought, he raised Bertran’s and Nela’s salary, and Aunt Sizzy went on doing with it what she’d done from the first: investing it in their names in blue chip stocks with a conservative brokerage firm.
Good fortune continued. The circus began to attract notice. During the twins’ third year, it was featured as one of three notable small circuses in a nationally televised special on educational TV. The twins avoided the TV interviews. They still weren’t of age, and they didn’t want to risk someone from their hometown coming after them, not that they considered it likely. Not long after, Matt Mulhollan called everyone together to make an exciting announcement. Mulhollan’s Marvelous Circus was to tour the European continent during the following year, a kind of exchange program in return for a Czech circus coming to the U.S. and Canada. Also, there was a possibility they might go to China the year after that. If the circus was granted permission to do so, certainly one reason, said Matt, being kind, was the attractive presence, among the more standard fare, of the Eighth Wonder of the World, Bertran and Nela Zy-Czorsky.
In Enarae, Zasper came to know all about Fringe Dorwalk. From a word dropped here and an implication there, from this tale and that recollection, Zasper managed to put her story together so that he felt he understood it. Perhaps, he told himself, it was part of his Enforcer’s habit, always to seek reasons for things. An Enforcer charged with Attending a Situation had to be able to judge what had caused the Situation, after all. Though perhaps, he admitted to himself, he was merely a snoopish old man who, having no family of his own, let himself dig into the interstices of other people’s. Or, he admitted somewhat wryly, it could be that he simply cared about Fringe.
Whether it was fondness or mere curiosity, he did learn about her, and about her family, most notably her father, Char Dorwalk, scion of the Professional class. Professional wasn’t top class, not Executive, but it was far from trash, as Fringe told him, quoting her grandma Gregoria Dorwalk. Professional class was the good life, plenty of perks and not many risks, so Char had been born lucky. All he had had to do to have a good life, said Fringe, still quoting Grandma, was be sensible: set up in a profession, find a Professional-class spouse, and settle down.
“The way you say that, I guess he didn’t do it,” said Zasper.
No, she told him in Grandma Gregoria’s words, Char hadn’t been sensible. Char didn’t set himself up in a profession and pick a Professional wife. Instead, he picked a pretty little chirp of a Wage-earner woman who kept the books at the debt-slave market. Her name was Souile Troms, and as if Wage-earner class wasn’t bad enough, she was clerk caste to boot.
“Clerk caste isn’t exactly trash,” Fringe quoted Grandma Gregoria once more. “But when you get that low, you’re getting close.”
“Does your grandma always tell you anything that comes into her head?” Zasper asked, dumbfounded. “Including stuff about your ma?”
“Grandma says my ma is a perfectly nice woman,” Fringe explained with some surprise. “She just isn’t suitable for my pa.”
Zasper shook his head. “Didn’t your pa think she was suitable when he married her?”
“Oh, my pa! He was all in a fine fever of dedication, saying he’d draw her up to his level,” Fringe replied, quoting Grandma Gregoria once again. “Grandma told him he could draw Ma up all he liked, but what was he going to do about her family?”
“Her family?” asked Zasper.
“The Tromses,” said Fringe. “Ma’s ma and pa. They live with us. Their names are Nada and Ari.”
Further questioning by Zasper elicited that the Tromses were from the very bottom of the class structure, Trashers— sometimes nicknamed Troughers, because they had their noses in the public trough. Souile Troms, born a Trasher, had done well to rise to Wage-earner class by her own efforts, but raising up her folks had been beyond her.
“If your ma wanted to marry Char, she should have left her folks behind,” Grandma Gregoria had said. “Her brother and sister went off and left them behind. Souile might have had a chance if she’d done that. I tried to tell my son, before he took them all in, but he wore me down. I finally told him to do whatever it was he was going to do. I couldn’t stop him, and after arguing and arguing, you get so tired you quit trying.”
Char had done what he wanted. Souile would not leave her parents behind, so Char had taken the setup money left by his father—every respectable Professional family provided funds to set up each child in a profession—had “invested” part of it, and with the rest bought a house large enough to hold them all plus the children he and Souile planned to have.
No house
