I set out and the first handoff went a little shakily, but Hugo’s sure hands gripped me. Even for him, it looked like it was a struggle to hold on to my sweaty palms. The chalk had turned pasty. I slid a little out of his grip, but we held on. The problem was that we were on a rhythm with Michel, who was waiting to grab me on the other side. Michel’s hands weren’t as sure as Hugo’s. I would have liked another second or two, but I turned and switched with Hugo grabbing the bar. I never trusted the bar on the return since we didn’t practice our returns with as much frequency. As I went into the roll, I teetered, losing the propulsion needed to reach the angle that would allow me to meet Michel’s hands. Worse yet, the audience knew it. I could hear the sound of dull moans mixed with excitement as they anticipated what would come next. In a split second I felt myself sink in the air and my face became hot—almost feverish—as I waited for what would come next: the humiliation when the net below me was revealed to the patrons.
My thoughts raced. “No,” I cried, loud enough that Niccolò’s orchestra paused.
And as though I’d issued a command to my own body, I floated in midair. With the lights dimmed, I couldn’t see them, but I could hear the gasps from the audience. As I felt myself sink, I recalled the feeling of humiliation and found that my body rose with the intensity of my emotion. Knowing the timing necessary for the performance, I began rotating my torso in a vertical turn, like a corkscrew, so I could stretch enough to meet Michel’s waiting hands. To my surprise, as I focused on his hands, my body traveled. What was now clear to this evening’s ticket holders was that I spun without the aid of any prop in my hands—no bar, no Spanish Web, no hanging silk. I was floating. Then I met Michel and he pulled me over to the perch.
With the lights drowning out the audience, I could only hear their applause. As I bowed, Hugo held my hand tightly. “You’ve got to do that corkscrew move again tomorrow,” he whispered. “That was the performance of the evening.”
At the end of the show, all of us—the horses, monkeys, elephants, bearded ladies, knife throwers, and lion tamers—took our final bow and walked around the arena. Standing in the center for the first time, I was surprised to find that I couldn’t actually see the crowd with the spotlight. Each performer stepped forward, and the noise from the crowed lifted and lowered. Hugo grabbed my hand and pulled me out from the line, and it was as though time stood still. As I bowed, I could feel the perspiration on my forehead and hear the whistling and roaring above me in the stands. When I returned to the line, I saw them—my fellow performers, imprisoned as oddities, but from the gratified looks on their faces, their eyes glistening with tears as the crowd clamored for them, I realized that when you’ve had a lifetime of adoration, you still crave it. Even if it required transforming into a bearded lady, a clown, or even a steed, adorned with a crown of plumes, they were given the ability to perform again. As I took a bow, I finally understood Le Cirque Secret.
In the hallway where I used to stand with buckets of water for the horses—a place I would never stand again—I saw the outline of Father standing there. Applauding.
And then to my surprise, tears began to roll down my face.
After the performance, Sylvie and I headed to Montparnasse. We’d had some famous guests at the show that night: Hadley and Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound and his wife whom they all call Shakespear, and Marc Chagall. I heard these artists were all the rage. Rage or not, after the performance, they clamored to meet us.
Even late into the evening, the cafés were packed. Montparnasse on a busy night was a symphony of sounds: conversations in French, English, and German; the clinking of cups against saucers; the street music of American jazz mixed with old-world accordions, both played with deft hands. Depending on where you turned your head, a different Montparnasse filled your ears.
We moved around all night, finally settling at Le Dôme Café, known as the American café. Inside, I could make out the drawl of the Americans’ accents, which sound remarkably different from those of their clipped British cousins. Halfway through my second glass of champagne, Hadley Hemingway tugged on my arm.
“That is the modernist French painter Émile Giroux.” She pointed to a man in the corner. “He wants to meet you.” The painter looked embarrassed and blushed. Then he turned his head and was fully absorbed in a conversation with the painter Chagall.
“I’m not sure what a modernist painter is?” I had been to the Louvre several times, but painters were Esmé’s territory.
“He’s defying convention,” she said brightly.
When my expression didn’t change, she laughed. “The legs are long and out of proportion,” she said. “The colors are crude.”
“So he’s not very good?”
“Oh no.” She motioned for me to come closer. “He’s quite good. In fact, he’s the best here. It doesn’t take much to copy something—he sees it differently.”
“Painters are my sister’s weakness.” I nodded over to Esmé, who came to the café on her own. She and a painter had struck up a conversation near the bar. With each drink they’d begun leaning into each other like rotting trees.
While champagne flowed, couples circulated, coming in from the Ritz, the Dingo, and the Poirier. Everyone raved about the circus.
“So was it real?” Ernest Hemingway lit a cigarette, and I could barely make out the words. I
