Lionboy (21 page)

“Excellent,” said Charlie. “Then, once on the quayside, just follow me down the towpath to the river, across the bridge to the station, and we’ll find the train. It’ll be dark, and late. There’ll be no one on the towpath or by the riverbanks, and it’s hardly lit anyway. The bridge’ll be the risky bit, but again, it should be empty by then . . .”

His heart sank. Look at them! They’re huge! How was he going to get six lions across a bridge in the center of a city without being seen, even in the middle of the night? Yikes! He hoped everybody in Paris would be drunk, or in bed—or at the circus.

“Then at the station, I’ve thought about that, if we come in on the tracks rather than the platforms, we shouldn’t see anybody, but we’ll still reach the train. If we lose each other, we can make our own way . . . and we’ve got an hour to get over there, before it leaves at half past midnight. Most of the passengers will already be on board, because it opens at ten so they can go to bed early and all that . . .” He ground to a halt.

“And have you booked our seats? Isn’t that what humans do?” said the oldest lion with a smile.

“No, sir,” said Charlie, worried for a moment, before he realized the lion was teasing him. “No, sir,” he said again, smiling, “but I have got a plan for where we’ll travel . . .”

And Charlie and the lions talked, softly, late into the night, finalizing their plans.

The plan was full of pitfalls. Charlie was terrified.

CHAPTER 15

C
harlie led the circus parade that evening.

When, at Maccomo’s insistence, he had pretended to try to get on the young lion’s back, the young lion had turned around and swiped at him viciously, leaving a great scratch down the side of his face. It hurt a lot (later the lion had apologized—he hadn’t meant to do it so hard), but it put Maccomo off—for the moment—and that was what mattered.

So instead, clad in red velvet, gold braid, and black boots that shone like polished licorice, Charlie walked beside the lions, who were tethered with heavy, heavy chains to a great metal bar that rolled behind them. Ringboys danced ahead to clear the way, and the rest of the circus gave them plenty of room behind. The crowds gasped and flinched when they saw the six great beasts and the brown boy walking among them.

They led the entire circus along the riverbank past the island with the great cathedral of Notre Dame where the hunchback lived, down the Rue de Rivoli past the Tuilerie Gardens to the Place de la Concorde, down the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe, and then back again, followed by the zebras and the horses, the Learned Pig pulling the twins in a little chariot, the Hungarian wearing his performing bees as a beard, the dancing girls and the bearded lady, Pirouette and the cowboys and Major Tib on his fancy black stallion, the Lucidi family turning somersaults and cartwheels, and the band in their pale blue suits playing all the show tunes and marches in their repertoire, drums rolling and saxophones parping and glinting in the sun. They all called out and sang and handed out fliers. They were pretty tired when they got back to the ship, but as Major Tib said in his speech when they returned, “Now everybody in Paris knows we’re here, and they’ll come, and they’ll all bring their friends.”

Then, when everyone went to bed, Charlie tried again to go out and check the route to the station—but again Maccomo called him back.

“I’m tense, boy,” he said. “I’ve been throwing up. Massage my neck.” So Charlie had to rub Maccomo’s strong, wiry neck and shoulders.

Everyone was tense. Tomorrow, the Premiere, the Big One, the first night. Excitement and anticipation roiled and coiled around the ship like vines, like smoke. Tomorrow, at last, they’d be doing the Show.

Charlie was tense too. But he knew what he had to do, and that made him calm. And in the meantime, despite everything—Rafi, his parents, Maccomo, the Allergenies, the imminent escape—he was really, really looking forward to seeing the Show.

Because he had never seen the Show before, Charlie was allowed by Major Tib to join the ringboys, who crouched right at the ringside, at the bottom of the aisles, ready to jump up and clear up between acts. Of course when the lions came on, Charlie would have his own work to do, but in the meantime he could just squat down there and watch.

First came the audience. What a crowd! They came rolling down the cobbled ramp from the Place de la Bastille to the quayside, and they were glorious: swanky ladies in big skirts, fat men in white waistcoats with sashes and medals, dangerous-looking fellows in long dark coats and high boots, children and mothers and fathers, skaters and punks, tough-looking big boys in worn leather pants, a gaggle of beautiful young girls carrying balloons and flowers and presents, laughing and obviously celebrating something, red-faced people up from the country, soldiers, a priest. They were of all colors, and spoke all languages: Some Charlie recognized—English and French of course, and some Arabic—but others might have come from Mars. Charlie peered around, looking for a lady who might be a tiger trainer, who even if she wasn’t actually wearing white leather looked as if she might, but no one stood out.

The Imperial Ambassador’s party had taken over the Great Box, and were the grandest and sharpest of all. Major Tib was up there with them, shaking their hands and clicking his heels and kissing the hands of the ladies. With the Calliope creaking away (luckily it was not so noisy inside the ship) and the gabbling of the crowd as they settled into their seats, the smell of the fresh sawdust from the ring, and the gentle glow of the yellow lights shining down, Charlie wished that he had no troubles—that he could just be an excited kid at a circus.

The music from the Calliope was fading now, and the chattering of the crowd faded too. The lights began to dim and a hush fell over the ring, over the ranks of people looking down on it and over the performers waiting beyond the curtains for their moment to come on and dazzle the crowd.

As darkness fell in the big top, there was a long moment of silence. The audience seemed to breathe as one in the dark.

Then a drumroll broke out, loud and bright:

At the exact moment that the band broke into a gay gallop, swirling, sweeping spotlights in different colors appeared way up above and cast their rays around the ring, garlands and paper streamers fell from the roof in twirls of color and a troupe of scarlet-and yellow-clad tumblers began to leap and vault from the four entrances of the ring into the center. One by one they hurtled in from different directions, lit by the spotlights, bouncing off their hidden springboards and somersaulting onto the mattresses in the middle. They missed one another by inches, it seemed, then leaped up, bowing and grinning, and ran back into the shadows at the edge of the ring to come bouncing in again. Some beautiful piebald ponies were brought in, and the tumblers bounced right over them, landing safe as cats, arching their bodies and flinging their arms back in delight at their own skill.

As the acrobats took their bows, bending in the middle and dropping their heads to their knees, or doing splits as if they were pieces of rubber, Major Tib came striding into the ring in a bright spotlight of his own, gorgeously costumed in a midnight blue tailcoat with shining gold buttons, white buckskin breeches, and black leather riding boots. He was holding his long elegant whip, and in ringing tones he proclaimed: “Ladies and gentlemen,
meine damen und herren, mesdames et messieurs,
welcome to Thibaudet’s Royal Floating Circus and Equestrian Philharmonic Academy, the Show of Shows, the Night of Nights: Tonight for your education, your delectation, your temporary perturbation, and your ultimate satisfaction we have the pleasure, the honor, the unparalleled ardor to bring you the show you have all been waiting for . . .”

His honeyed voice was as fine and round as a bell. He told the crowd what acts would appear, and how fabulous they would be, he cracked his whip, he blew his whistle, he threw back his manly shoulders and twirled his dashing mustache, and all the men in the audience rather wished they were a bit more like Major Thibaudet, while all the ladies in the audience rather wished their boyfriends and husbands were. Charlie could see that the ringboys meanwhile were sweeping up the streamers and garlands, and pulling the leapers’ mattresses out of the ring, in the darkness, while from the spotlight Major Tib extolled the magnificence of the show that was about to start.

It began with twelve zebras waltzing in rows of three to a beautiful tune called “Zizu’s Waltz,” their plump little bodies glossy and fat, and their strangely ancient-looking heads adorned with black and white plumes. They bent their striped knees, to-ing and fro-ing, making the prettiest striped black-and-white patterns as they crossed and recrossed one another. Then the lighting changed color, which changed the color of their white stripes, and they made pink patterns, then blue, then green, and then a mist slid out over the ring from the dry ice machines, and the zebras arranged themselves in a circle, all facing inward, bowed to one another, and carefully lay down as the mist rose up to cover them, for all the world as if they were going to sleep, and the beautiful sad tune was taken up by a lonely saxophone.

The lights turned to the inside of the great striped roof of the big top. Snow was falling from the roof—but going up too—swirling—only it wasn’t snow, the flakes were too big: It was fluttering doves, all different colors. And rose petals. Falling and floating. Everyone gazed, entranced, as the doves and petals swirled and settled around the sleeping zebras.

Not even Charlie had noticed what was going on meanwhile up in the flies: The wireguys had been preparing the next act, which Major Tib came back out to introduce.

“Ladeeeez and gentlemen,” he roared, “tonight,
ce soir,
here in Paris at Thibaudet’s Royal Floating Circus and Equestrian Philharmonic Academy you are about to witness the wonderful, you are about to experience the exceptional, you are about to be implicated in the impossible, for tonight,
mesdames et messieurs,
we have with us for your amusement and astoundment the one, the only, the world-famous, unique and irreplaceable Devil of the Air, el Diablo Aero,
funambuliste extraordinaire,
the man who can live his entire life on a wire as thin as your neckchain, madam”—here he gestured magnificently to a lady in the front row—“and as high as the regard in which the Imperial Ambassador holds his wife”—here he gestured magnificently toward the Great Box, and carried on without taking a breath. “In short, ladeeeeeeeez and gentlemen, without further ado, I give you—el Diablo Aero!”

Way up in the big top the wire was stretched taut as a guitar string across the expanse of empty space, and at one end there was Aero, looking quite superb in a silver leotard with silver legs, holding his long, drooping balancing pole, and pointing one of his toes with inexpressible elegance.

First he just stood there for a while, looking fabulous. Then he ran along the wire, just to show it who was boss. Then he danced along it, hopping and skipping, and he kicked off his shoes. Then two girls came out to join him, also in silver leotards: the twins! They tied a blindfold around his head, and blindfolded, he trotted across the wire. Then he put the twins in a wheelbarrow and wheeled them across. Then he got out a little stove and cooked an omelet up there, flicking it like a pancake; then they made a big hoo-ha of inviting a fellow up from the audience. In fact, one of the Imperial Ambassador’s party was very keen to come, so he was helped into the ring, trying to look tough and confident, and then he climbed up the rope ladder to the flies, and then when he reached the platform, el Diablo Aero had a word with him, then lifted him up on his back, and carefully, gently carried him piggyback over the high wire to the tiny platform on the other side. Charlie was consumed with envy.

But now what?! Instead of bringing him back again, el Diablo had scampered back across the high wire, leaving the fellow stranded! There were no rope ladders on the other side; indeed there was no way down . . . El Diablo and the twins were laughing, but goodness knows what the Imperial Ambassador’s guest thought. Charlie bit his knuckle.