Nadya had refused to be paid for the reading and said something to the daughter. The daughter repressed a grin, plugged the earphones back in and returned to her music. Outside it had started to drizzle.
Ada stepped down from the caravan and saw the rest of the Flying Hawks sisters heaped together on top of a couple of big trunks under a tarpaulin. They were eating something with their hands from the same plate. They stared at Ada without waving. They looked like a cluster of newborn puppies, close as they were to one another in a tangle of bare arms and feet.
“Who the fuck cares,” Ada whispered under her breath as she walked away briskly. She wasn’t sure whether she meant she didn’t care about the reading, or about not having sisters she could hang out and eat from the same plate with.
* * *
In November the circus closed down for the season.
The morning after the last show in Sant’Agata dè Goti, a small town in the Apennine Mountains, Ada walked to the grandstand and watched as Andor and a few other men began to unhook the rigging. The ringmaster, the uncle of the Flying Hawks girls, had climbed the center pole and was yelling instructions to the men below, each one of them knowing exactly what to do, when to pull or loosen the ropes and the hooks until, hours later, the tent lay flat on the ground like a dead beast and was folded and stored in the spool truck.
The circus shows would resume by the end of March. Meanwhile, Andor told her, the two of them could use the downtime to rest. He made it sound like a pleasant opportunity and told her he would take care of her food and small expenses so that she wouldn’t have to touch any of the money she had saved. He also said that they could come up with ideas for a new act, and that he’d been thinking about a sort of Indiana Jones theme. He was to dress in a khaki outfit, complete with Stetson hat and cowboy boots, like the character from the films and she could be his American partner. Wouldn’t she like to play a strong woman, an archaeologist or maybe an explorer?
She winced. “That’s so silly,” she said. “Plus I don’t want to wear safari clothes. I prefer to stick to my old costumes.”
Andor immediately backtracked. “Okay, no problem. Then you can be the goddess of the Temple of Doom or something. In any case I’m open to suggestions.”
* * *
There were going-away parties and farewells as a good number of the performers went back to their homes in Eastern Europe. Andor said this happened every year at the beginning of winter: many left, to return again in the early spring, and only a few remained, those who had no real home to go back to. Ada watched through strips of rain as people packed up and loaded their cars, leaving at the break of dawn. Over the next few days more and more of them left. Then suddenly one day it all went quiet. Even the snakes had gone into hibernation.
Those who had chosen to stay moved the trucks with the animals and the remaining trailers to a cornfield in a nondescript town near Salerno, inland from the Amalfi Coast, where the mayor had given them permission to settle and camp during the cold months for a small fee.
Ada was confused: without the tent, the circus was no longer a circus, but a bunch of rusty trailers. Other than feeding and taking care of the animals, there was not much going on during the day. The Flying Hawks had left, and with them most of the top artists. She missed the grandstand, the feeling of being underneath the protection of the tent, the echo, the lights, the smell of sawdust mixed with sweat and rosin.
Above all, she missed Snow and the other snakes, she realized, the feel of their muscles on her bare skin.
* * *
The Iranians arrived on a sunny December morning. Ada sat up from the red couch where she was eating her chocolates and watched them through the frosted window as they drove inside the camping ground, a procession of white Mercedes cars followed by a couple of large trailers. She crumpled the umpteenth golden foil and walked out the door. She sat on the step.
The cold tramontana wind that blows from the north had swept off the dampness of the November rains. The air was fragrant; one could smell the freshness of snow already falling up in the distant mountains. Ada closed her eyes, letting the winter sun warm up her skin.
The men were unpacking their belongings, unrolling carpets, pulling out cushions from the car trunks. Andor followed Ada outside and stood next to her on the step.
“A bunch of crooks,” he said with contempt. “They will bring trouble.”
She turned to him, irked.
“How do you know that? Sometimes you sound like such an old fart.”
Those men didn’t seem like they were looking to steal anything. Their cars and clothes were expensive, their hair was black, long and shiny, they were handsome. And they were young.
* * *
At night, beside him, she had turned into a corpse. He didn’t even try to touch her, knowing that once he was overtly rejected it would set a precedent and she might migrate back to the red sofa. He needed her body to be near his, at least at night, because during the day she was gone most of the time. But even so he knew she was no longer there, and because they had never spoken about what their sexual relationship was or what it meant, he felt helpless and unable to ask her what had gone wrong.
Every morning, as soon as Ada saw the young Iranians move around the camp, preparing tea, washing clothes, she would run out.
The women had no problems befriending her; they didn’t treat her as a stranger. Like the men, the women had long hair but theirs fell down to their waists and their eyes were lined with kohl. Some of them were pregnant, some already had a couple of babies, but they were only a few years older than Ada. They laughed with her, invited her to sit with them and offered to put henna in her hair. They insisted they must wax her entire body with a mixture of honey and sugar. One day Andor found a bunch of them sitting with Ada on the floor of the caravan, going through the costumes of the Bandhra Fakhir act. Ada let them borrow whatever they liked—the harem pants, the sparkling silver top, the Rajasthani skirt. Soon Ada started looking like one of them. She let her hair loose, she took to wearing sandals even though it was nearly Christmas. Andor seemed not to mind; after all Ada deserved some company, and it was okay if she imitated their style.
The men were friendly as well. They spoke some English, and it turned out that Ada knew a few words and had no problem making herself understood. Now, as soon as it got dark, she disappeared into one of their trailers, and Andor imagined her cross-legged on the thick carpets that lined the floor. He pictured her resting on the pillows, drinking the dark tea the women served, smoking hashish with them. He was never invited to join them.
“I know those people smoke drugs. They do it in front of everybody—it’s no big secret,” he said to Ada one morning while making coffee on the camping stove of the caravan. She had just taken a shower and had tied a sarong around her body. Her legs were still damp and glistened with tiny drops.