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

“I do.” I was sobbing now.

“Will you accept him on any terms?” I knew what he was doing now, binding me to something. “I cannot give him back to you in the way you want. It is not in my power to do so.”

I would take Émile on any terms. “I’ll do it.”

The room was silent except for the curtain rustling against the wall. When I turned to look at him, he was gone.

I sat next to Émile’s bedside, expecting some improvement. By evening, he began coughing up blood, then defecating blood; blood ran from his nose, his eyes, and his penis. I mopped up sheets soaked with his blood. I took his shirts, knowing that he wouldn’t be needing them, and mopped up more blood. As I wiped every inch of him, I noticed that the cut on his hand remained pristine throughout, never healing even after a week. It was then that I knew what she had done. I held his hand and stared at the cut.

When the blood stopped flowing, I felt a sense of dread. His breath began to slow, but he gasped. I didn’t understand this. I had bargained with Father, but it appeared he didn’t keep his promise. Before dawn, Émile died in my arms.

They took his body away and burned the sheets; the landlady didn’t even wait until his body was removed before she began to strip the room in preparation for another artist who needed cheap lodging. In my haze, I’d forgotten to grab the paintings. I ran back upstairs but found them gone already. When I came back down, I found the canvases in the alley, neighbors picking through them. I spied the painting of Sylvie and grabbed it from the pile, snatching it out of another man’s hand with strength that surprised him. I pored through the other paintings, looking for the ones of Esmé and me, but they were gone.

When I got back to the circus, Doro was at the entrance. “There is a new ride,” said Doro’s puppet. Doro the clown looked excited until he saw my face. The puppet looked up at me. “What is it, dear?”

“Émile has died.”

Doro the clown took my hand. “You will want to see this ride, then.” Bloodstained and weary, I was about to protest, but he took me by the hand and led me down the Grand Promenade of the arcade to a carousel. “Your father just created it this this morning around dawn,” said the puppet.

I stopped dead in my tracks. “Doro, what does this carousel do?”

“I cannot explain it,” said the puppet. “You need to ride it. It’s glorious. It may be his greatest creation.” He helped me onto a horse. Doro pulled the lever and the horse stepped backward. Like it was waking up, the brightly painted carousel horse began to shift in front of me and a real mane sprouted down its neck. The horse put its head down and began an odd backward trot, then finally a gallop. The lion next to me was also waking and running backward. Around the carousel all the animals—the giraffe, the elephant, and the other horses—were running in a strange backward unison.

This was madness, I thought. And then I felt sleepy. My head was heavy and I nestled into the horse’s mane. He seemed to anticipate this.

The first image hit me. Émile sitting with me at Le Dôme Café. I could smell the cigarettes in the air above us. I touched his hand. This version was warm and healthy. Then the image shifted to his bed—the one he’d just died in. Only he was very much alive and on top of me. I could touch the sweat on his back as he entered me. I lingered there, sensing that this image would remain as long as I wanted it to, but then another moment revealed itself and I thought my heart would break leaving my Émile. The scene was him sketching me at the circus. The way he looked at me. Then Émile, breaking the cheese on a steaming bowl of onion soup. Me, walking at Les Halles. I could see how much he’d wanted to hold my hand, though I hadn’t noticed it then. The woman in a silver gown with a tiara scurried by with a man in a black evening jacket chasing after her. I envied them their happiness and my eyes recalled the wonder at the market in the wee hours of the morning. Next I was standing in the Rue Mouffetard market, where he handed me an apple. With this scene I felt the energy of the world shift. Father was wrong. Émile could have painted me or not painted me; the outcome would have been the same. I loved Émile Giroux. The horse slowed and light began to leak through the image of him as though he were a curtain eaten by moths. And then he was gone.

When I finally looked up, satiated from Émile’s images, Father sat on the control box. “Well?”

“It’s not the same,” I said. “It’s not him.”

“You said you’d take him in any form.”

I slid off the horse and stepped down from the carousel, passing him as I walked down the Grand Promenade.

“You didn’t ask the price,” he called after me.

“It’s because I didn’t care,” I replied.

November 30, 1925

For the last few months, as my condition has become more pronounced, I have been unable to perform. Instead I now ride the carousel. Once, I found Esmé descending from the carousel’s platform. She looked forlorn and in what appeared to be a drunken stupor; then she saw me. I was livid to think that she was on the carousel lost in her own images of him. Émile and my carousel do not belong to her.

Had I not been pregnant with our child—with his child—I believe I would have killed Esmé with my bare hands and taken Father’s