"On nights when they held their entertainments, when they had their drinks, their music, we knew we were safe for one or two hours. We'd hear the laughter, we'd hear the singing, the applause, the shouting..."
Ruda unbuttoned Tina's blouse, cupping the heavy breasts in their white lace brassiere. Her skin felt soft, so soft. Ruda had an overwhelming desire to hold Tina, as if she was some long-forgotten lover she wanted to protect. She no longer frightened her, she knew that, and she cradled Tina in her arms, drawing her closer, her lips close to Tina's face. She gave gentle, almost sweet kisses to her neck, to her ears. Tina felt the sadness sweep over her like a wave, a terrible sadness. She could not stop herself giving in return a childlike kiss to Ruda's neck. "Where were you?" Tina asked hesitantly, unsure what was happening, why it was happening.
Then Ruda rested her head against Tina's breast, while Tina softly stroked the back of Ruda's head, as if to encourage her to continue. "Where were you?" Tina repeated.
"Oh, I was someplace, someplace a long time ago. The older ones discovered there was a flap beneath the main hut, that we could wriggle beneath, hide under the trestle benches, hide and wait to see the show..."
Ruda moved to rest her head on the pillows. Tina could easily have got up then, but she didn't move. The strong woman's sadness had mesmerized her.
"What was the show? Was it your first circus?"
Ruda sighed. "Yes, it was a sort of circus. They had animals, they had dancers, and they had hunchbacks, and giants. They had every imaginable human deformity, but they had chosen only the prettiest girls, they were thirteen, maybe a little older, but each one had her head shaved, her body hair shaved, and they wore coronets of paper flowers... red flowers, like bright red poppies."
Ruda's eyes stared at the ceiling, her face expressionless.
"They made the dwarfs fuck the giants; they made the hunchbacks fuck the pretty sweet virgins; they forced the dwarfs to ride the dogs' backs with their dicks up their arses. They clapped and applauded, laughed, and shouted for more. Then they began to beat the pretty, weeping girls, and they kept on beating them until their white bodies were red with their own blood, as red as the paper flowers on their scraped and scratched bald scalps. One of the trestles moved, cut into my leg. The others escaped, they crawled back under the feet of the bastards, inching their way out. But I couldn't. I was trapped, I had to keep on watching. When I shut my eyes, it made it worse because I could hear them, hear the cries, hear the dogs."
Ruda seemed unaware of Tina, who slowly inched away, and then slid from the bed until she knelt on the floor to pick up her clothes. Ruda made a strange guttural sound, half sob, half cry, and covered her face with her hands.
"Oh God, my poor Tommy, poor Tommy...!"
Tina slipped on her blouse. Ruda made no attempt to stop her from leaving. She wiped her cheek with the back of her big raw hand.
"Not until the show was over, not until they were too drunk to stand, too drunk to care, could I crawl back. Next morning, I saw what they'd done to the older ones. They were on the cart, the skin of their little bald heads burst open, clouds of flies stuck to their blood, purple-black rimmed eyes. They only wanted to see the show, to see what made everyone laugh."
Tina crawled toward her skirt. Suddenly Ruda rose from the bed, her hand outstretched. "Don't go. Please stay with me, just for a little while."
Ruda reached over and placed her hand on the unborn, the rounded belly of the young girl. "I will see that you have money to travel, but you must leave."
Tina backed away, the expression in Ruda's eyes made her afraid again. "You will leave, Tina, but without my husband."
Tina blurted out a pitifuclass="underline" "No... no!" She would never forget the look on Ruda Grimaldi's face, the strange hissing sound before she spat out the words: "He is mine!"
The slap sent Tina reeling against the wall. At the same time Grimaldi eased open the trailer door, silently, so as not to wake Ruda. He heard the cry, went to Ruda's bedroom, and opened the door. For a moment he was unable to comprehend what he was seeing.
He slammed the door, burst out of the trailer, and began to vomit. He turned as Tina rushed out hysterically, half undressed, sobbing. She gasped. "My handbag... I want my handbag."
Tina snatched it from him and ran. She stumbled once, flaying the air with her hand, and then was out of sight.
Ruda was at the trailer door, looking at him... shaking. "You better get some coffee down you. Come on, I'll get Mike to clear up in the morning."
Grimaldi, dazed, allowed himself to be helped back up the steps, stood as she took his jacket, peeled off his shirt.
"Christ, you stink. What the hell have you been doing?"
"I met Fredrick Lazars, we got drunk..."
"Sit down and let me take your pants off, you stink like a dog!"
Grimaldi sat as she heaved off his boots, unbuttoned his pants.
"I slept with Boris, a baby chimp."
He curled up on the cushions. She brought a blanket, put it on him, then placed a bottle of scotch next to him for when he came around. She knew he would be unable to face the day without a drink. When she was sure he was asleep, Ruda returned to her room and slumped onto her crumpled bed, confused by the evening's events. What had she just done?
She rubbed her arms with revulsion, very angry at herself. She had told Tina, stupid little Tina, about a part of her life that she had never shared with anyone before. Why? She bit her knuckles. Tina had made her feel something, the girl's soft body in her arms had reminded her of a warmth, a loving, she had forgotten. But it wasn't the same. It was stupid to even think of it now. She had to get her mind straightened out, had to think straight. She had even offered to pay her money to leave — why? "Ruda, what do you want?"
Even if she didn't want him, was it the real truth that she didn't want anyone else to have him, either? That surprised her. "What do you want?" Ruda said aloud as she started pacing up and down the small bedroom. Her pace quickened, and she paused twice looking up at the cupboard. She could feel its pull, but every time she got close to it, she turned and walked back across the room. She paused by her poster. She pressed her hand against her own face, and then she couldn't stop herself. She stepped up on the small stool by her makeup mirror, and opened the small cupboard above. She had to balance on tiptoe to reach it, her hands pushing aside boxes and hats until she felt the cold sides of the black tin box.
She hugged it to her chest, secretive, like a child, and then got to her hands and knees, lifting the carpet until she found the key. She always felt a strange sensation opening the box — pain pierced her insides. The odd assortment of treasures, her secrets that meant so much to her, but were of no value to anyone else. She spent a long time fingering, touching her "things," unaware of the low humming sound she made, her body rocking backward and forward.
"Mine, mine... mine..." She licked the small oval gray pebblelike object, then replaced it, and looked to the poster of herself. "Mine, mine, mine." Her face in the center of the brightly colored poster became a distorted skeleton head. She could see the loaded truck, weighted down, being dragged through the muddy yard, teetering dangerously to one side. Beneath a hastily thrown tarpaulin, she glimpsed the stacked, bloated bodies, and from the crushed bellies of the corpses came the hideous hissing sound of escaping gas.
As the truck tilted a body slid from beneath the tarpaulin and fell to the ground, rolling to one side. The guards shouted to the orderlies to get the corpse back on the truck, but then in the darkness something glittered on the fat bloated hand with fat purple fingers. The guard tried to wrench the thick gold wedding ring free, but try as he might he could not release it. He picked up a spade and, holding it above his head, he brought it down blade first across the dead woman's hand. The fingers jumped, as if they had a life of their own, fingers like black sausages, and they rolled in the mud. The guard dug this way and that, swearing and shouting but unable to find the ring. He gave up and screamed for the truck to move on. An orderly unhooked his coat belt, made a loop, and flicked it over the dead woman. He dragged her by her neck back onto the truck, and then pulled the tarpaulin down. The guards and the Kapos began to push and shove the truck forward through the freezing muddy ground.