The Twenty-Four-Hour Man prides himself on knowing how to talk with nuns, but they dicker so craftily—not proper for nuns, not proper at all—that he’s embarrassed for them. He has no idea they’re embarrassed for him because he is ugly and kneads his lumpy chin. They get him to raise his offer, but once he agrees, they demand gratis tickets. As usual he feigns indignation, waits them out by silently counting—to ten to fifty to two hundred—but these nuns are virtuosos of silence who’ll outlast him if he were to count to a million.
He sighs, dramatically. “Tickets for all Sisters.”
“And for all Girls.”
“The Ludwig Zirkus cannot afford that.”
“It doesn’t have to be the Sunday performance.”
“Monday then.” He stomps off but halts by the door. Winks.
To announce the Ludwig Zirkus, he ties his painted banners around trees and hires a dozen local men, farmers and merchants and toymakers, who’ve waited at their regular jobs for months, counting on the wages and free tickets for their families, but even more so on the thrill of being roustabouts for one glorious week. Every August Kalle and his childhood friend Köbi whisper about running off with the Zirkus, even this morning while mucking cages and spreading fresh wood shavings.
* * *
For new Girls who haven’t been to the Ludwig Zirkus, the Sisters rhapsodize how fabulous the parade will be, eclipsing one another. This is when they are most alike—Sisters and Girls—in their Vorfreude, joy of anticipating joy.
“—ornate wagons and horses—”
“—with head plumes and acrobats—”
“—dancing dogs with tutus and hats—”
“—ponies prancing in tight circles—”
“—poppies braided into their manes—”
“—a sad and beautiful clown woman—”
“—red shoes and she paints hearts—”
“—on the foreheads of children—”
And it’s all true, the Girls say as they follow the parade through the streets with hundreds of spectators, exhilarated to be part of village life that transpires outside the St. Margaret Home and usually excludes them, except for church where they’re confined to narrow pews below the pulpit.
Behind the St. Margaret Home the earth is still so soggy that its scent has become one with the air, thickening your breath. The Ludwigs welcome the roustabouts and remind them that working for their Zirkus means dedication. Perfection.
“Some traveling shows rush to put everything together, causing accidents. None of that with us. We expect you to ensure the safety of our audiences.”
Enthusiastically, the roustabouts pull ropes and tarps from the supply wagons; wedge lumber scraps under the wheels; unload animal props and provisions; secure a wide plank that slopes from the first wagon to the ground; bridge additional planks between all wagons. Then Silvio Ludwig unlocks the cages. Spectators in their Sunday clothes cheer and applaud as animals emerge from the first wagon, one after the other down that plank where the priest blesses this extravaganza of creatures living harmoniously, he says, without bars. They smell almost like livestock, Tilli thinks, only more exotic. Livestock makes her think of the barn back home and of her brother who won’t be able to find her.
* * *
During the performance Tilli’s cramps escalate—all worth it, the glory of the performers, the magic—but now her body is turning itself inside out and she cannot allow herself to collapse because it would be selfish to lie on the ground when everyone’s shouting and searching for the toymaker’s children. Who are drowning or have already drowned. Tilli screams. Pains slam her to her knees and people surge forward; two church women—faces like Lent—are right on her; then Heike from the Zirkus and her mother who checks Tilli’s pulse. Lotte runs toward the screaming, certain her children have been found—any moment now Hannelore will stand up, head above the curved backs of the people who bend over Martin and Bärbel to help them—but Lotte cannot see who’s on the ground until she shoves through the crowd to the center where Sabine and two church women help a screaming high-pregnant Girl who should not be on the Watt. Should not—
Heike rubs Tilli’s belly. “Do you have a baby in there?”
Tilli says her cramps just started, but the women don’t believe her. They get her up, carry her to the St. Margaret Home. My cramps just started, Tilli tells Sister Franziska who slips off her amber rosary and hangs it from the key of the medicine cabinet before she examines Tilli in the infirmary, encircled by murals of gold-plated peacocks big as cattle.
“Kitsch,” Sister Franziska says to Tilli. “This used to be a mansion, commissioned by a bishop half a century ago. With funds he stole from the church. From the diaspora fund. From the collection basket.”
* * *
Right out in the open the bishop built his mansion, the Old Women wrote to the archdiocese. Taller than the steeple of the church. Such decadence. Marble stairs that curve to the second and third floors. A conservatory with an aviary where peafowl shriek like wounded children. The Old Women celebrate with Kaffee und Kuchen when the bishop is banned to a destitute parish near the Polish border—potato fields and ravens. His peacocks stay on Nordstrand, procreate and survive hunters, except for five killed for food. But the haunting echo of their cries makes it impossible to eat them in a stew or a soup, though some people try: after all, they’re used to slaughtering chickens and sheep; still, they feel like cannibals and spit out the stringy meat.
* * *
For half a century the bishop’s mansion stands empty until a hazy day in 1842, the Old Women recall, when leaves drift toward the ground in yellow currents, and a flock of young Sisters arrives from a faraway village by the Rhein. One carries a cage with orange-beaked finches. In the clearing between church and dike floats an apparition, a dwelling more splendid than the Sisters have seen or contemplated: its edges shimmer in the mist, quiver as if it had metamorphosed untold times. A rush of huge wings. For an instant the Sisters believe the mansion is rising. Cries, then, half-human, half-beast. And three shapes heave themselves into the air.
Sister Franziska and Sister Ida cross themselves.
Sister Konstanze tightens her arms around her birdcage.
But Sister Elinor laughs. “Peacocks!”
The peacocks plop on the roof, talons scraping slate, and ogle the Sisters who ascend the front steps, led by the youngest, Sister Hildegunde, thin hands tucked into opposite sleeves. That day the sisters won’t unpack porcelain and cutlery and practical items. No, they only open boxes that hold what matters to them: paints and sheet music and books; a flute and a violin; a weaving loom. Soon, big-bellied Girls arrive, most so young that they giggle and run from the Sisters, play hide-and-seek in the chapel.
The Old Women bring gifts: loaves of bread; canned beans and peaches; applesauce. They have been on Nordstrand for centuries, its chroniclers, its conscience, its judges. They witnessed the flood of 1634 tear the island Strand into four islands, one of them Nordstrand. They fled when the most devastating flood of all obliterated Rungholt in 1362. The Old Women remember Rungholt through their own memories and through what was bestowed upon them over centuries; and they know the urge, the beauty to bestow all this upon the next generations. And with that the urge to pass it on.