No Stars at the Circus Read Free Page A

American car going down the street. They did come, sometimes, because foreigners like to do that sort of thing, especially in the old narrow streets like ours. Then we’d rush down onto the street to cheer them on.
    At least you can drive down rue de la Harpe, not like poor little rue du Chat-qui-Pêche, which is close by. It has nothing in it, nothing at all, and only a bicycle can ride through it. Because of its name Nadia says it should be for cats only. Especially Grimaldi, who loves fish.
    Anyway, there are no foreigners now, only Germans and they don’t count because they are invaders, not proper foreigners. And there are hardly any cars any more because there’s very little petrol. Top brass Germans grab everything they want, so they’re pretty much the only ones with big cars now. They’re the ones with the medals and ribbons over their pockets who get driven everywhere.
    “The ones with the golden nooses,” Papa said. “The lords of misrule and destruction.”
    Mama said, “Shh,” but Papa said nobody would know what he was talking about even if he went and shouted it outside the Hôtel Meurice, where the top brass Germans have their parties. Then she said he should think of his family if he wasn’t going to think of himself. What would happen to us if he was dragged off for shouting insults at German soldiers? He didn’t say anything for ages.
    There
are
horses still, of course, lots of them, but they don’t pull carriages any more, only delivery wagons.

MY SISTER
    Nadia is only a year younger than me but I am allowed out on my own and she is not. This is not just because she is a girl and younger than me but because she is almost completely deaf, and Mama and Papa are afraid she might not hear a car coming and would get knocked down.
    She used to go a special school for deaf children which is not too far from my school. She can talk pretty well and people often do not realize she is deaf, but we have to write everything down for her, or else use signs.
    Mama made up a special language of signs just for Nadia when she was a baby and couldn’t read. We, all of us, learned how to use it and now we can say most things we want to say to her with our hands. But she had to learn different signs when she went to school, and so did we. She can lip-read now too.
    My sister can even listen to music. She would put her ear to the side of the piano when Mama played and she could tell when the music was Beethoven and when it was Chopin. Well, anybody could do that, I am sure, but Mama thinks it is very clever because Nadia’s ears do not work like everybody else’s.
    Nadia says she likes Berlioz best but that’s only because his name is the same as Mama’s. I like Mozart best. Mama says when I pass my next music exams I will begin to learn either the clarinet or the flute. She’ll let me choose.
    But all that talk was when we had a piano, and a living room to put it in. I haven’t been able to practise music for a really,
really
long time. And now, even though the Professor has his fine old piano, here I am, stuck up in the attic, like a monkey in a monkey-puzzle tree.
    When I was with Signor Corrado’s circus, sometimes I used to play the little organ they kept in its own little tent, but it always sounded funny. People laughed no matter what I played. They laughed most of all if I played a funeral march. Signor Corrado said there was a clown inside the organ and he couldn’t get rid of him.
    I will continue my testament tomorrow because it is getting dark now. There is no special black-out bulb in this little room and the Professor told me the curtain must be pulled across all the time, even at night. I can’t even have a candle in case I burn the house down.
    He’s just brought me up some beans and cabbage. I heard him coming so I hid the notebook. I didn’t want him to see me writing anything down. He’d probably get too worried. But I wouldn’t say anything bad about him, of course.
    Except that