The Ladies of the Secret Circus by Constance Sayers (the little red hen ebook TXT) 📕

end. I can almost smell it around me, like that most fragrant scent of the ripest fruit just before it begins to rot.

From across the table, Émile glanced at me. He was excited that he’d been permitted to do what no other artist has done—paint Le Cirque Secret. There were two more paintings to complete, and Man was telling him how to frame the next one. There was a part of me that felt a sense of dread for Émile, like he had agreed to something before he was fully aware of the consequences. As always, with Father there is the fear he has struck some terrible, mortal bargain. Émile doesn’t know how the world—my world—works. There are always consequences.

While our dinner companions dined on oysters, I chose boeuf. Overhead, I heard the fan cycling above me and felt its cool waves of air as they hit my forearms.

“You need to push yourself.” Man lit a cigarette and dismissed him with the shrug of his hand. “You are an old romantic.”

Like in a tennis match, they volleyed ideas back and forth, trying them on. What is surrealism? Who is a true surrealist? What role does art play in a mad world?

I realized the idea was to shock or subvert with art. To my horror, it occurred to me that this is what they think we do with Le Cirque Secret. What we do isn’t a performance—what they see each night is not some dream of Hell. It is Hell. That I come and go freely makes it seem like I’m an actress who dons a part and shakes it off cleanly each night. But for Doro and the others, their Hell is hardly metaphorical, and their costumes are not so easily tossed.

Halfway through drinks, Man began to chastise Émile for being too much like a man named Modigliani, saying he hasn’t pushed against the vein enough. At the mention of Modigliani, Émile became quiet, almost forlorn.

When they were talking among themselves, Émile leaned in to whisper to me. “Amedeo has been dead for five years, but I feel as though it were yesterday.”

I must have registered confusion on my face because Kiki leaned in and whispered, “Amedeo Modigliani was Émile’s mentor. Terrible shame about him. He died of tuberculosis. His pregnant wife, Jeanne, leapt to her own death two days later. Her family won’t even let her be buried next to him.” Kiki touched my arm for emphasis, her blood-red nails lightly tapping my forearm.

From across the table, Émile picked up the saltshaker and rotated it with such intensity, that the little glass shaker hit the table, causing it to vibrate.

June 2, 1925

Today I found Émile painting Sylvie. I stood behind him to admire the many sketches of her standing by the steed—an old horse who might have been a king in his previous life. Naturally, the horse couldn’t tell us anything, but Father has alluded to his true identity several times.

This was not the pose that Émile wanted, so I called to Sylvie for her to try an easy stand on the horse’s back since she would need to re-create it several times in order to capture the sketch.

Émile looked puzzled at the required pomp to mount His Majesty. So the horse would cooperate, Sylvie was required to address His Majesty by bowing to him before she began her routine. To an onlooker (and everyone but His Majesty), it is a comical gesture. After the bow, Sylvie walked him around the ring and stroked his mane and neck as she fed him carrots. If Father’s hints were to be believed, this horse was once a particularly randy king who seduced his entire court, so the idea that he is ridden for show is a rather interesting punishment.

Sylvie mounted His Majesty and they began their routine. Using her leg, Sylvie hooked onto the horse’s back, dangling on the side, her arms outstretched, the only thing holding her to the horse being the power of her legs. Next, as the horse galloped, Sylvie, in one swift move, stood on the horse’s back then flipped midair, landing in a perfect stand. In this simple stand, both horse and rider were completely one, Sylvie’s body rocking in time with His Majesty. While Émile could have chosen a more complicated flip, it was the face of the horse and rider so perfectly in sync that made this sketch so compelling.

“You try.” Émile handed me a charcoal. I gave him a quizzical look. I wasn’t an artist, but while Émile stood to the side watching Sylvie perform, I sketched the curves of the horse for him, the bob of his head rocking in perfect unison with Sylvie.

From my life in the shadows, I knew every corner of the circus. This intimate knowledge has provided me with a watcher’s eye, an artist’s gaze. “You want this pose,” I said to Émile, motioning to Sylvie in the moment just after she finished a flip when she was flushed like she had been happily ravaged. If you saw her up close, there would be sweat on her upper lip and forehead.

Immediately he sat down and began to sketch the outlines of Sylvie and the horse, attempting several versions to get the right amount of space on the canvas.

“The painting is so small.” I’d imagined the three paintings on large, dramatic canvases.

“I hate those giant things. My last painting was a hulking thing called The Vampire. I want to try something different. Honestly, I never know where the circus will be from week to week and I need to be able to carry everything.” He pointed to his case of paints.

Sheet after sheet of poses littered the floor. As quickly as they fell, he called on Sylvie to try the flip two more times. As she maneuvered on the horse, Émile altered the sketch until he had the final pose. It was an angle from above them in the stands. The composition was