The Ladies of the Secret Circus Page 20

  “You’ve got to admit, Teddy,” said Gaston. “It could have just been a surrealist performance circus. They used mirrors or mesmerized them all. The joke could have been on the audience. I mean, I don’t know how they pulled it off, but you have to admit it is possible. Even the journal could be a fictional account.” He pointed toward the notes.

  Barrow shook his head violently. “I’ve considered that. Mourier didn’t believe it was performance art, like so many of the artists did at the time. In fact, he was the one who coined it the Devil’s Circus in his article.” Barrow pointed a fork at Gaston. “When Giroux died mysteriously after completing the final painting of the circus, Mourier was convinced that it had been his association with it—and the ladies—that killed him.”

  Gaston grinned at Barrow, conceding. “It’s a real fucking Giroux, isn’t it? You finally found one of the missing Giroux paintings, my friend!”

  “In my estimation, yes,” said Barrow, leaning in. “The canvas on your painting is the same, down to the wraps and the hardware of the other ones from that time period. I could set that painting next to another one and you could see the blue he used. He loved muted turquoise and it wasn’t an easy color to paint, but he used it in all his works. That it isn’t finished is also an intriguing detail giving credence to it being one of his final paintings.”

  “To think it was hanging in the hallway next to the powder room all these years,” said Lara.

  Barrow laughed. “So many valuable paintings were in barns or in attics, especially after the Second World War.” He leaned in. “If you leave the painting with the institute, I will give you a definitive answer. I don’t know your plans for the painting’s future, Ms. Barnes, but I do know that the Musée d’Orsay would be a fine home for it should we all agree that it’s authentic.”

  While Lara had thought about parting with the painting, she wasn’t prepared to make a decision this fast; plus, she’d need to consult with Audrey. Gaston, sensing her unease, tapped his fingers on the table. “I don’t think Lara has thought much about the painting’s future yet. This is all so new.”

  “Well, Gaston,” said Barrow. “I’m not sure carting it around is exactly the best plan for what might be a French national treasure.”

  The weight of this hit Lara suddenly. “How valuable is it, really?”

  Barrow shrugged. “In one of the auction houses, ten million, especially if it is proved to be one of his final paintings.”

  “You might consider keeping it locked in the institute’s vault, not that the Tumi you’re carting around isn’t doing a wonderful job of securing it.” Barrow winked at Gaston.

  During a breakfast of croissants and café au laits, Barrow had called saying another Giroux specialist was excited at the prospect of seeing the painting and would be driving up from Nice that morning. Barrow had also been working most of the night enhancing Lara’s translation of the diary, adding to and fixing missing entries.

  “I wonder if there are more journals?” Gaston settled into reading her notes.

  “I don’t know,” said Lara, lying. While Althacazur had promised her a scavenger hunt where she’d find more, so far there had been nothing.

  After he’d finished reading, Gaston flagged the waiter for another espresso. “I am going to see a few art contacts up in Saint-Denis. The art is cheap up there. Would you care to join me?”

  “Nah, I’m going to try Père Lachaise instead.” The last time Lara was in Paris, she’d failed to see Jim Morrison’s grave. Her father wouldn’t forgive her if she didn’t make the pilgrimage on this trip. After that, she’d thought about going to the Rue Mouffetard and the cafés that Cecile mentioned in her diary.

  “Jim Morrison is so touristy.” Gaston frowned. “Maybe go see Sartre’s grave instead?”

  “Wrong cemetery,” said Lara. “But I may do that when I’m over at Montparnasse. I know, I’m so American.” She looked at him gravely.

  “There is hope for you yet. At least see Proust while you’re at Lachaise.”

  “That,” she said, grabbing a pain au chocolat on her way out, “I will do.”

  As she rode down the boulevards in her taxi, she could smell the linden trees blooming above her, the sweet smell reminiscent of honeysuckle. The driver let her out at the Père Lachaise entrance gate on the Boulevard de Ménilmontant. After consulting the map, Lara walked up the hill on the cobblestone path through the thick canopy of trees, weaving among old stones with their layers of moss and untended tombstones covered in weeds. After winding around, she made a hard right and followed a group of people who were clearly Americans and about her father’s age, so she took a bet which grave they were visiting. Within moments, she found a group gathered in front of the modest headstone of James Douglas Morrison, lead singer of the Doors. The site was overflowing with a number of trinkets, flowers, and photos of the musician in front of his concrete slab, causing the cemetery to require a barricade.

  The Lizard King was one of her father’s great music idols, and that legacy had been passed down to her. Jason Barnes was one of the true anchors of her life. While her mother was a reminder of who she was—the daughter of a famous family of circus owners—her father was the catalyst to show her who she could become. Without him, she never would have had the courage to buy a radio station. For both of them, music was always the door to where they could go next. It still pained her to think of the way he’d looked at her the other night as she’d played Peter Beaumont’s song.

  As a kid, Lara recalled riding around with him in his old pickup truck to see a widow about a vintage guitar. Jason was always on the hunt for something, usually related to music. In those days, Lara followed him around like a bad shadow. This particular widow greeted them at the door in her housecoat and curlers, then led them through a maze of boxes and too-big furniture. As they navigated the tumbledown house that smelled of piss and old newspapers, Lara stuck close by her father, clutching his hand until her fingers went numb. At a clearing in the clutter, the woman presented Jason with a battered black guitar case.

  While everything about the house was decayed, her father popped the case, and tucked in the worn red velvet was the most beautiful and well-tended guitar that Lara had ever seen. Lacquered and black with a big silver shield on the front, this instrument—as Lara would learn—was known as a resonator guitar. What she was looking at was, in fact, a 1937 Dobro. Her father seemed to sway at the sight of the instrument before he rubbed his hands together and coaxed it from its velvet cradle. He placed it on his lap, adjusted it briefly, and borrowed a worn finger pick from inside the case—one the guitar knew well. Jason didn’t even need to tune the guitar first, just wanting to hear what the instrument sounded like. When her father played the first few notes, Lara fell in love. It was a deep metal sound, rich yet spare, and she could hear the physical transitions from the strings and the melancholy sound of the minor chords. Her father’s smile told her the guitar would be going home with them that day.

  As they drove down the dirt path out of the house, her father looked back at the guitar case. “You know about Robert Johnson?”

  Lara shook her head.

  “Robert Johnson had been an okay guitar player in Mississippi, getting gigs in juke joints and bars, but he was nothing great until he went away to Chicago and came back like a year later with skills he didn’t have before.”

  “Maybe he practiced.” Lara was sure of things in those days, and practicing had been drilled into her head from her mother and Cecile. From riding horses to playing the piano, they believed in the power of practicing.

  “Maybe so,” said Jason. “But the legend said that he’d gone to the crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and sold his soul to the Devil to play so well. Guitars are mysterious things, Lara. The strings hold things; so does the instrument. The man who owned that guitar—well, his energy is still in that instrument. I only want to try to honor it.”

  “So it’s haunted?” Lara’s eyes were wide. She chewed on t
he end of her ponytail, an occasional habit to quell the nerves.

  “I guess so, in a way,” he said, pulling down his aviator sunglasses and adjusting the truck’s sun flap.

  Like an artifact in a museum, that guitar still sat in the radio station, along with ten others, including Rickenbackers, Gibsons, and Fenders.

  Morrison’s own father had purchased a headstone for his son. Lara read the Greek inscription—KATA TON DAIMONA EAYTOY—which means “according to his own daemon” or “true or faithful to his own spirit,” depending upon how much lore you wanted to attach to it. Much like the music legend of Robert Johnson, another idea that circulated for years was that, having faked his own death, Jim Morrison was still alive somewhere. These were great stories, but she wasn’t sure either of them had much truth. It was funny really; if anyone should have been a believer after all she’d seen, it should have been her. She took a picture of the grave, for her father.

  From there, Lara walked up the hill toward section 85 to see Marcel Proust’s grave, noticing the broken columns of people who died violently, usually young. As she turned left on Avenue Transversale, one of the main tree-lined boulevards of the cemetery, she saw something moving out of the corner of her eye. Turning slowly, she pretended to be consulting a paper in her hand. There standing fifty feet behind her was a woman with a low blond ponytail, bangs that looked to be a wig, and cat’s-eye sunglasses. When Lara turned, the woman immediately attempted to look occupied. Lara glanced to her right, but there was nothing behind her. Something about the woman’s stance suggested purpose, not a leisurely stroll. Lara thought she must be getting paranoid, so she continued to walk up the hill toward the crematorium at a faster clip, winding around the random headstones, then the writer Molière’s grave, before ducking into the row early and making a fast right turn that led in a circle down the hill and took her back to Jim Morrison’s grave.

  Tucking behind a tall obelisk gravestone, Lara discovered that the woman had also made the same hard right turn and appeared to be searching for her along the trail. The peacefulness of the cemetery was now broken as Lara started down the hill, climbing among the gravestones, staying low so the woman wouldn’t spot her. She was sorry she hadn’t gotten a better look at her, but wasn’t sure it was worth the risk to try to do so. At the bottom of the trail, Lara was dumped back out onto the main boulevard. She made an immediate left, heading back toward the front entrance, using the rows like a maze. When she got down to the front entrance, she turned to see that the woman was about two hundred yards behind her and walking at a near run. She wasn’t going crazy. This woman was following her, and she now knew that Lara was aware of her. This realization only seemed to embolden her.

  She is coming for you. Was this the woman Shane Speer and Althacazur had warned her about?

  Once she was through the gates, a sudden adrenaline rush kicked in and Lara ran down Boulevard de Ménilmontant. As she stopped for breath, she could see that the woman was trying to keep pace, but she’d had a good head start. Ignoring her pounding lungs, Lara started up again, picking up her pace in a steady run down Avenue de la République, dodging and ducking around crowds of people. She stopped and bought a hat and T-shirt, changing into them as she ran, and tried to blend in with a flock of tourists. Craning her neck, Lara could see that the woman was still on her trail, but the quick costume change had worked—at least for now.

  She ducked into the kitchen of a café. Catching her breath, Lara realized that everything Audrey had said was true. The faulty guitar wire, the scooter in Rome—all of it had been designed to kill her. A tightness started in her throat, and recalling the words her mother had made her memorize, Lara began to chant them, almost choke them out:

  Bracatus losieus tegretatto.

  Eh na drataut bei ragonne beate.

  It was just as Audrey had described. Despite it being a sweltering day, a heavy breeze rolled down the boulevard. Trees began to shed their leaves, the lindens sending a sweet perfume past her. Rather than relying solely on the magic, Lara searched for an escape.

  She ran to the traffic circle. Coming down the hill, she saw the woman spy her and pick up her pace to catch Lara. Remembering what Margot had done, Lara considered the cars circling then took a deep breath before darting in front of traffic. As her foot left the curb, she realized just how risky this was, but she trusted the magic. The cars had to stop. She took off running, drivers swerved and slammed on their brakes to avoid her, and she was able to cut across four lanes. From over her shoulder she saw that the woman had gotten caught in the tangle of traffic. Lara turned down another street and ran past a tall iron gate, chanting quietly under her breath as she looked around for the woman. She stopped so suddenly she could hear her shoes squeak. Her lungs were burning, and she wasn’t sure she could run much more without a break.

  An old man with Coke-bottle glasses looked up from sweeping an empty courtyard. He noticed that she was breathing heavily and looked panicked. Quickly, he motioned for her to come toward the gate, opening the door a crack. Looking behind her, Lara didn’t see a taxi; nor were there any Métro signs in the area. The man’s offer was as good as any. As she heard the gate clank behind her, she wondered if this was another illusion she’d just conjured, but the gate felt real, so she shut it tightly behind her.

  Wordlessly, the man pointed toward a converted railcar that sat parked in the otherwise vacant courtyard. A railcar? Lara quickly stepped up into the car and shut the door behind her, crouching down near an open window, a cool breeze rustling the white curtain. The woman ran past the gate as the man continued to sweep. From her vantage point, Lara could see the ponytailed blonde double back to ask the man something in French. Lara’s heart sank. Had this been a trap?

  The man nodded, saying “Oui” to something. Lara’s breath caught. She looked around the cramped railcar, wondering where she could go if she needed to escape. The windows might open wide enough to send her out the back, since both doors opened to the front. Crouching down by the table, she began chanting again in a whisper. She watched as the man pointed across the street, indicating that Lara had cut through the park. Satisfied, the woman ran in that direction.

  Sinking into the seat, Lara closed her eyes and exhaled. So it was true: She really wasn’t safe outside of Kerrigan Falls.

  Inside the railcar, Lara noticed it was a museum of some sort. Lining the walls were black-and-white photos, all of vintage circuses. She spun, realizing the entire car was a shrine to the Paris circus, featuring vintage photos of Cirque Medrano’s famous Boum Boum the clown, the curious wig shaped into two points on his head making him resemble a rabbit. Another showed Jumbo, the famous elephant whom Lara knew eventually ended his career in the United States. In a case near the door hung a gold-and-red vertical-striped leotard. The inscription read: LEOTARD OF MISS LA LA. It was the costume from the famous Edgar Degas painting. She studied each photo—together this had to be the largest collection of circus memorabilia in the world.

  “Vous êtes un fan?” asked the man, who had come in through the door. Now Lara could see he was older—perhaps in his seventies. He was tan and wiped sweat from his brow with a hankie that he kept in his back pocket. His glasses were so thick, she wondered how he could see anything.

  “Oui,” said Lara. “What is this place?” She motioned around the room.

  “Ah, the Musée de Cirque Parisian.” He pointed to the sign behind him. “You are American, oui?”

  “Oui.”

  “My English is not so good.” He sat down rather heavily in one of the wooden seats that was part of a booth. “This is the rear entrance of Le Cirque de Fragonard.”

  Lara looked out the window to see the famous hexagonal building of Le Cirque de Fragonard’s Paris location. She was so busy running that she hadn’t noticed it earlier.

  “The woman?” He pointed outside.

  Lara shook her head. “Je ne la connais pas. Elle m’a suivi de Père Lachaise. Merci.”

  “A pickpock
et, perhaps?” the man asked in better English than Lara expected.

  “Oui,” said Lara, not believing that the woman’s intentions were that innocent. She turned to the photo. “Is this from the 1920s?”

  “Earlier.” The man stood up and walked toward the photo. “This was the famous clown Boum Boum. Le musée has photos and paintings from all the circuses in Paris, not just Fragonard. The circuses were very competitive, but le musée is for all.” His hands gestured around the room. There was a pride in his expression, like this was a personal collection.

  Lara studied some of the photos, looking for anything that might resemble a secret circus. “My great-grandmother performed here in Paris in the 1920s. They called it Le Cirque Secret. Have you ever heard of it?”

  The man’s face fell. “Le Cirque Secret? Are you sure?” He motioned toward the door. “Come with me.” He breezed past her and back down the stairs. Before she exited the railcar, Lara looked to make sure the ponytailed lady wasn’t standing outside the gate, but the street was empty. The man was insistent, motioning for her to follow him, his keys and chains rattling as he walked. So fast was his pace that Lara nearly had to run through the door to the main circus building, past the bathrooms and down the hall marked EMPLOYÉS SEULEMENT. As she walked through the door, she found herself in a hall lined with empty animal stalls. The man was ahead of her in the long hallway and was already unlocking the door when Lara got to him. She assumed he was a maintenance man, but she wasn’t sure that he—or she, for that matter—should be in this room.

  Once the door opened, he motioned her in and turned on the light. Inside the tiny, windowless office, Lara saw that the walls were littered with more circus memorabilia, but unlike the railcar, this was a private collection. Women spinning by their teeth or riding horses, sad clowns, happy clowns, clowns with umbrellas, horses diving, women walking on tightropes with umbrellas. There were nudes and disturbing fetish photos as well. She felt uncomfortable looking at some of these with the man staring at her, but then there was one picture—a small painting—that caught her eye and seemed to beckon her. It was the painting’s size that stood out as well as the now familiar color palette, the muted baby blues, aquas, and browns. This painting showed a woman with long white-blond, almost platinum hair that was gathered at the nape of her neck. The woman was about to step onto a ladder. The artist had chosen to paint the subject with the trapeze above her, tilting her head toward the ladder before she ascended. It was the moment before the performance was to begin, the excitement and fear visible on her face in her clenched jaw and the firm lines of her mouth. This was a more intimate portrait than the other one, now called Sylvie on the Steed; more time had been spent on this subject’s face. While the finish on this small painting was smooth, it bore the initials EG. Émile Giroux.