No Stars at the Circus by Mary Finn Read Free Book Online Page B

Giaconda, a real live Italian work of art, why don’t you and your father come and see our show tomorrow afternoon? You would be most welcome.”
    He spoke French, but not like anybody I knew. His voice seemed to have the sun in it, just like his face did, and his teeth, which were really white. He spoke every word slowly and smoothly, as if he was spinning sugar on a stick.
    I don’t know why I said what I said next. Mama had warned us never to say anything about ourselves.
    “But we’re Jewish,” I said. “I don’t think we can come.”
    Then I remembered my manners. “But thank you very much.”
    The man sat up straight, as if the deckchair had suddenly grown a long stiff back. He took the cigarette from his mouth, stubbed it out and put it in his pocket. Then he stood up.
    “In that case, Jonas,” he said, “I promise that you will have the best ringside seats.”
    He made a little face.
    “Well, that is, you would have them, if we
had
a ring,” he said. “But you will have the best of what the Corrado Circus has to offer. And if you have any brothers or sisters or cousins or any companions in crime like yourself, bring them too. Your party will be our most honoured guests.”

3 SEPTEMBER 1942
FEASTS
    Today is the war’s third birthday. The Prof made scrambled eggs for us. He said they weren’t hen eggs
exactly
but they had just the same kind of protein inside them that would make me grow. When I asked if they were magpie eggs he just laughed.
    “I’ve a source not so far away that sometimes comes up trumps,” he said. “It’s like having shares in a shipping line. Of course, I refer to the days when shares used to come up trumps.”
    I didn’t know about that, but for someone who is so shy he seems to know quite a few people who give him things. Maybe they were once his pupils, like Mama was.
    Anyway, the eggs were delicious even though there was too much pepper in them. I didn’t even mind that the bread wasn’t toasted, because the eggs took the staleness out of it. But I don’t know why he wouldn’t say what kind of eggs he’d used. Were they dinosaur eggs? The museum is just across the park. But I didn’t say that in case it sounded like the eggs were bad.
    He brought everything up to my attic room – the pot with the eggs, the bread, the plates – and he ate here with me, both of us sitting on the floor with our backs to the bed. That’s the first time he’s done that. Really, I’d much prefer to go downstairs and eat with him in his kitchen but maybe this was a start.
    “It makes a change to eat with somebody else,” I said. “I like it better.”
    He coughed for a bit about that. Then he told me that he and his wife have a son called Robert, but he lives in the United States of America. They were going to go there to be with him, just before the Germans came, but then Madame Prof got ill and so they couldn’t go. Then she died. He said Robert plays the violin in an orchestra in New York, so that means he must be an adult, not a child. The Prof is definitely too old to be a child’s father.
    I feel bad sometimes that I’m getting better food here than I did in rue des Lions. Mama did her best but there was very little she could find for us. And because Papa couldn’t work, at first there was only the little bit of money he had left from the shop.
    It was Nadia who saw Papa going to where he’d hidden the stuff we’d brought with us, the watches and jewels wrapped up in the chamois skins. He’d made a safe place for them under the floorboards. Nadia saw him take two watches out and put them in his pocket. She can be really quiet when she wants and people sometimes forget she is there.
    Papa must have, that day at least. He wrote a note for Mama and left it by the sink. Then he went out.
    When he came back he had some fish, red mullet I think it was, and some bread that was
nearly
white. Well, at least it wasn’t black with spots in it, like the usual bread. He had some big