The Name of This Book Is Secret (11 page)

My brother, Luciano, and I, we were born in a small town in Italy, in the time between the Wars.

We were twins—what they call in English the “fraternal” twins, not the identical twins. A distinction that is very useless, I think. Yes, if you looked at us closely, there were many differences between us—like the birthmark on the back of Luciano’s neck that resembled so perfectly a crescent moon. But Luciano and I, we were identical in our hearts.

When we turned nine years old, our lives, as they say, turned upside down. A terrible man rose to power in Italy, and our whole family it was in danger.
^*
Our parents, they were being watched, but they managed to find the passage for Luciano and me on a boat to America. They promised to join us as soon as they could, but we knew that would not be very soon. Or maybe ever.

It was an awful thing to leave our home at such a young age, but at least we had each other. During the time we were making the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, we never left each other’s sides. As a parting gift, our father, he had given to us an old book of the magic tricks, and we spent all our days practicing the card tricks and amusing the crew on the boat. Every night, as we went to sleep, we fantasized about our new lives in America, and how we would become world-famous magicians.

Our mother, she had a cousin in Kansas City. We were very excited to be going there because we had heard the story of the Wizard of Oz and we knew Kansas was full of the tornadoes and the adventure. What we did not know (until it was too late) was that her part of Kansas City was in Missouri, over sixty miles far from the capital of Kansas, Topeka, where we happened to get off the train.

It was the nighttime and we were cold and tired and we’d been wandering through the streets of Topeka for several hours when we saw a marvelous spectacle lit up in front of us: a circus.

Alas, having no money, we could not enter the circus tent, the Big Top, as it is called.
^**
But we found a flap in the tent through which we could watch the horses galloping, the clowns juggling, and even a mangy old tiger jumping through a hoop of fire.

What most impressed us was the Ringmaster, so magnificent in his top hat and tails. We didn’t speak much English but we could tell what he was saying by the tone of his voice, and by the screams and the cheers of the crowd. At one point, I could have sworn he saw us and he winked at us. It was like as if he knew us and, although we were outside and we had not paid for the tickets, we were the most important audience members of all.

When the show ended, we followed with the rest of the circus audience out into the Midway. This was an old-fashioned traveling circus with all the great sideshow attractions like a fire-eating strong man, a fat lady with a beard (which we later learned was fake), and a “fakir” (actually a white man dressed up to look like an Indian swami). Being amateur magicians, we wanted to look inside all the booths, but the carnival workers—the carnies—they were watching us like as if they were the hawks.

We had such a great hunger that the smell of all the cotton candy and the popcorn and the peanuts was almost too much to suffer. Then we spied a food cart that had been left unattended. A row of red candy apples glistened under a string of lights, ripe for the taking. Quickly, we each grabbed an apple and darted into the shadows behind the cages of the animals. What luck!

But as soon as we sank our teeth in, those apples they were ripped out of our hands. Shocked, we looked up to see grinning down at us a tough old carny. He was missing most of his teeth and, believe me, that grin was a scary thing to see.

“Nice of you to help feed the animals,” he said, tossing our apples into the cage of the tiger.

“Oh, no,” he laughed as we watched the tiger swat aside our apples like a cat with the yarn. “She don’t like apples. Them apples is just to give her the smell. The smell of human, I mean.”

As he said this, he gripped us by the scruffs of our necks, and he made a big show of sniffing us like as if we were the dinner. Then he dragged us toward the door of the cage of the tiger. We screamed and we struggled, but it was useless, his grip was so strong.

By now, we were crying and pleading for our lives in Italian. We thought truly we had reached the end.

“Good-bye,” I said to Luciano.

“No, not good-bye, just
arrivederci,
” he said, looking up toward the sky. “We will be together always.”

“Yes, together always,” I said, trying to be as brave as he was. I touched my finger to the crescent moon of his birthmark and I closed my eyes.

“Let go of them, Sammy!”

It was the Ringmaster walking toward us. “Don’t worry, boys. That old tiger don’t got any more teeth than Sammy does. She couldn’t hurt a fly!”

Eyes twinkling, he said we should know better than to run away like that with the stolen goods.

“When you steal something, you should walk away slowly,” he instructed us. “Otherwise you attract attention.”

As a punishment for our poor attempt at thievery, the Ringmaster ordered us to help Sammy clean the cages of the animals. Very relieved to be alive, we worked so hard that even Sammy was happy with us.

The next morning, exhausted but also exhilarated, we were sitting outside the Ringmaster’s trailer with his three-year-old daughter while inside his wife prepared the breakfast. To pass the time, we took out our deck of cards and practiced the tricks—which the Ringmaster’s daughter seemed to find extremely amusing. We did not know it but the Ringmaster he was watching us from the trailer. When we finished, he applauded.

“Lucy knows a good trick when she sees it,” he said, pointing to his daughter. “We try out all our acts on her.”

After Luciano and I we ate all the bacon and the flapjacks (why is it that the food always tastes so much better in the outside?) the Ringmaster instructed to us to help his crew pack up the tents. He never asked from where we came or to where we were going. He just assumed that we would be traveling with the circus—and so did we.

If you’re one of the lucky (or is it the unlucky?) people that are meant for the life of the circus, it is as natural as the migrating is for the geese, or as the hibernating is for the bear.

After reading that last sentence, Cass closed the magician’s notebook. She had to stop reading not because the story had ended but because the bell had rung. Actually, it had started ringing around the time Pietro and his brother were being fed to the tiger and if Cass and Max-Ernest didn’t move very quickly they were going to be late for their next classes.

Max-Ernest, in an unusually rebellious mood, suggested they skip their classes altogether and continue reading, but Cass pointed out that they might attract unwanted attention that way. After all, neither of them was in the habit of ditching class. So they reluctantly agreed to postpone reading until lunch, when they would remeet behind the gym.

When lunch hour arrived, Cass was so anxious to get back to the magician’s notebook that she didn’t notice the police cars and fire trucks parked in front of the school.

Can you imagine—Cass missing what may well have been the first real disaster in her school’s history? What can I say—even a survivalist gets distracted sometimes.

I promise we’ll return to those police cars and whatever terrible event it is that they foreshadow. But let’s stay with Cass for the moment; I’m sure you’re almost as anxious to get back to the notebook as she was.

In case for some reason you had to stop reading earlier when she did—if, say, some mean person caught you reading this book when you were supposed to be doing your schoolwork, or when you were supposed to be outside “enjoying the sun”—I remind you that Pietro and his brother, after accidentally stumbling on the circus, have now become a part of it.

As soon as Max-Ernest joined her behind the gym, Cass jumped right back in and started reading aloud:

After a few weeks in which we did every job from cleaning up the elephant dung to acting as the shills, the Ringmaster let us put together our own circus act. The act included not only the card tricks but also the mind reading—this was perfect for us because we knew each other so well and practically we had been in the telepathic communication all of our lives.

Also, and this will become important to my tale, we both had the condition that is called the “synesthesia”—the confusion of the senses.
^*

For people who have the synesthesia, the sounds and the colors and even the smells are all mixed up in our heads.

When I hear the sound of scraping metal, I see a streak of bright yellow-green light. Screeching tires are orange-red. Most bells are blue, although when I see the blue, I don’t hear the bells, I smell the soap.

There was even a certain woman who needed only to say one word and I would see a dark gray cloud and then feel like I was drowning in the coldest lake on the Earth—but I am getting ahead of myself. She appears a little later in my history. If only she never appeared at all!

What was the most helpful for our act was that, for me and for Luciano, the numbers and the letters they all had the colors. For example, the number 1 was green, 2 was purple, and 3 was yellow. At the same time, the letter X was red, Y was gray, and Z was turquoise.
^*

I can recall the day my brother and I first realized that other people did not see the letters the way we saw them. We were seven years old and a friend from the neighborhood she was drawing with us. She kept writing her name over and over and we kept telling her she was using the wrong colors. I am ashamed to say we were not very nice about it. Our friend started crying so loudly that our mother had to come and tell us that our friend could use whatever colors she chose.

In the circus, it was very easy for us to have conversations with each other in the color code. If I asked a girl in the audience what day her birthday was, I could tell Luciano the date simply by waving at him a few colored scarves. He would pretend to concentrate really hard, then he would shout out her birthday like it had come to him in the trance. In this way, we seemed like very convincing psychics.

Over time, our act grew into something very splendid. The Ringmaster’s wife, she made for us the satin capes and the turbans, and Sammy, who was now our friend, he helped us to create some magical effects with the music and the smoke and the lights of many colors. But it was after a mysterious gift arrived that our act truly came to life—and also came to the end.

One afternoon, a local boy, he brought to us a large package wrapped in brown paper. He said a beautiful lady had paid to him a buck to deliver it to us—a fortune of money in those days.

As soon as he left, we ripped open the package. At first, we had no idea at what we were looking, or why it had been given to us. It was a wooden case, very old, containing dozens of the glass vials. Was it some kind of chemistry kit? For what purpose was it?

Only when we saw a small brass plaque that read “The Symphony of Smells” did we have the inkling. Could it be true? Were there other people in the world who experienced the music and the smells together? How fantastic!

After a few days of the experiments, we discovered we could make stronger the scents by making a fire and pouring in just a little bit from the vials. The smoke it turned many colors, and the aromas they filled the air. We added also a little of the gunpowder—enough to make the sparks together with the smoke and the smells. It was very exciting to see.

Luciano and I, we practiced every day until we were able to communicate with the smelly smoke—“smell signals” we called it. Imagine— now I could tell Luciano the name of somebody’s cat just by releasing the scent of mustard into the air! Truly our act was now “the feast for all the senses.”

The Ringmaster, he liked it so much he bought for us a special tent with a big banner announcing “The Amazing Bergamo Brothers and Their Symphony of Smells.” Everywhere we went he put up the posters advertising our act. And the crowds, they lined up again and again.

It had been a year since we’d joined the circus and we were once again in Kansas. There was an article about our act in the newspaper and we wondered if perhaps our mother’s cousin would come to see us. Who knew—maybe our parents had already come from Italy and they would come, too!

During the show, I searched the audience, but I saw nobody special. Except, that is, for a woman who stepped into our tent toward the end of our show—and made me forget all about my parents.

This woman, she was so beautiful she seemed to make the whole world stand still. She had blue eyes and a waist so tiny she should have herself been a circus attraction. She had long blond hair, and she wore long, elegant gloves that reached up to her elbows. Gold jewelry glittered on her everywhere.