Ascension

  His only consolation, aside from the money, was that the Spouses had got a raw deal in the whole arrangement. After he had sold his share of the F-F they had little choice but to sell as well and had received considerably less for their twenty-eight per cent than it was worth, a relatively paltry fourteen million dollars. The remaining Respectable, whose sliver of the company amounted to less than two percent of the circus, waited the entire deal out, and then got nearly seven million, half as much as the Spouses. The Dutch consortium had wanted to own the entire company, and was willing to pay handsomely for total control of the name that had become synonymous with the circus.

  It pained Martin greatly to see the F-F pass from family hands, and as much as he loathed the Spouses he would rather have seen them control the show than sell it, but there had been no other way. If he had waited another five years, they would have been bankrupt, and then it would have been worth nothing. At least this way they made some money. He only wished that others could see it in these terms. They did not. Martin bought a castle in Scotland and left the United States a bitter man.

  IT WAS NOT LONG AFTER THE F-F WAS SOLD that Anna woke up one morning and discovered Daniel was gone. She was not surprised. He had been nearly completely physically recovered for almost a year, and in that time Anna had seen him have several large seizures. After the first one, she had known without a doubt what had happened on the wire. She did not tell Daniel that she had seen him in the field behind the barn, and though she desperately wanted to, she did not run to help him on the subsequent occasions she saw his seizures. She was sure that Daniel would leave if he knew his secret had been discovered.

  Likewise she had said nothing to Salvo. The guilt kept her up nights, so much so that she was often still awake after Salvo had frightened himself into sleep. She knew that he still blamed himself for the fall, but she did not want to tell him that it was not his fault because she was afraid that if she did he would return to the wire. Slowly, though, the guilt wore her down, and she knew that soon she would have to tell him everything. The consequences would be hers to bear.

  Daniel left no letter, taking only his bank book and a small suitcase. Most of his clothes were still folded in their drawers, and he had even made his bed. Anna lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling. Slowly she felt something inside her rip itself free from her chest and float away from her body, and when she sat up she was no longer angry. At first she didn’t know what was different; she had been angry for so long that she had grown used to the feeling, until it felt like anything else. Then she realized what had changed, and she went downstairs and out into the fields to find Salvo.

  She found him sitting cross-legged in the field behind the house, staring up at the sky. There was fear in his eyes, and he was stiff like a corpse. Anna pried him off the ground and took him into the house, sitting him at the kitchen table. They sat across from each other, Anna’s hands over Salvo’s. After he had passed through whatever had frightened him, she told him that Daniel was gone, and that he would probably not be coming back. Salvo nodded, like he too had been expecting this to happen.

  Anna swallowed hard, her heart racing. “It was him who caused the fall.”

  Salvo stared at her blankly. “Daniel?”

  “Yes. He had a seizure on the wire.”

  Salvo was dumbfounded. “How long have you known this?”

  “Several months. I was afraid to tell you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I knew he would leave.”

  “He has left anyway.”

  Anna bit her lip. “And I knew you would go back to the wire.”

  Salvo shook his head. “I will not go back. It does not matter whose fault the fall was.”

  Anna got up and went to a drawer. She opened it and took out a stack of letters. She placed them on the table in front of him. “I think you should go back,” she said. “I won’t walk with you, but I think you should go back.”

  “What are these?” Salvo fingered the letters, not opening them.

  “Offers to walk. Skywalks, mainly.”

  “You have kept these from me?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  Salvo stood. “I can’t go back.”

  “Yes, you can. It’s the only way that your fear will stop. I don’t understand why, but it is the truth.”

  Salvo looked into Anna’s eyes, and he knew she was right. But he did not know if he could return to the wire. He did not know if it could be the place it had once been. And he did not know that he would not fall. “I will think about it,” he said.

  Neither Salvo nor Anna slept any sooner than normal that night, but for the first time in a long time, each found comfort in the other’s arms, and they did not miss the sleep.

  Daniel got off the bus and blinked as the light brightened. Toronto. It had taken him a while to get there, and as soon as he stepped off the bus he knew he would not stay for more than a few weeks. It had nothing to do with Toronto; it was simply a feeling that this was not the end of his wandering.

  His father had told him a story when he was small, and since the accident it came to him often, interjecting into his thoughts like a rude companion.

  “Once, long before you were born, there was a group of Roma who found a boy standing on the side of the road, all alone. They looked high and low for his parents, but no one could find them. Finally it was time for the Roma to move on, and by then everyone liked the boy, for he was a very smart and likeable boy, so they decided to take him with them.

  “Well, time passed and the boy grew up, and his adopted family was very proud of him. He had learned to play the most wonderful music and was a gifted smith, and he could even cast magic if he needed to. But he was curious about the world of his ancestors, and about gadje life, so he vowed he would leave his Romany brethren for one year. After the year was up, he would return and tell them all he had learned.

  “He went for the year and was taken in by the gadje, who also liked him for the same reasons as the Roma. He lived with them and was treated like a prince, though he never said anything of his past.

  “When a year had passed he returned to the Roma, but his mind was poisoned. ‘I am told that you Roma steal babies. Was I stolen?’ he asked. Many were insulted by that question, but they knew the gadje said these things, so they answered him. ‘No, no. We found you on the road with no one and nothing, and we took you in like our own.’

  “He looked skeptical and asked another question. ‘They say that the Roma lie and cheat. Is that true?’ Well, many others were insulted, but they answered him the same. ‘No, no. We do the same as anyone else. No better, no worse.’

  “He did not appear convinced. ‘I do not understand,’ he said. ‘I have lived with the gadje for a year, and I do not understand why they would lie. They are far smarter than the Roma.’

  “Now the Roma were really insulted. To think that he whom they had raised, whom they had fed and clothed and taught all they knew to, would say such things about them and take the word of the gadje over theirs, well, that was too much for them. Though they loved him dearly, he was cast out and told to stay away until he felt differently towards the Roma.

  “He was only too happy to be gone. ‘Good riddance,’ he said to himself. ‘I am not a Rom anyway.’ And he went back into the city. However, when he met a family he had known only days before, they did not seem to remember him. ‘I will show you,’ he said, and he picked up a fiddle to play them a song he knew they loved. But when he played, the most horrible sounds came from the fiddle. He did not understand why, but he was undeterred. He saw a pot that had a hole in it and said, ‘I will fix this pot, as I have many pots for you before, and you will know from the job I do that it is me.’ But try as he might, he could not fix the pot. ‘Go away, you, and quit hurting our ears and damaging our pots,’ the family said to him. They threw him out of their house and shut the door tightly behind them.

  “The man was very angry. ‘A curse on this house,’ he said, ‘an
d all that inhabit it.’ But nothing happened. His magic was gone as well.

  “From then on he was a beggar, and in only a few years he was no longer handsome and looked like an old man. Then one day his old Romany friends came through the town, and they recognized him at once. ‘How do you like living as a gadje, brother?’ they asked him. ‘I cannot play music. I cannot fix things. I have no magic,’ he cried. ‘Of course not,’ they told him. ‘Those are Roma things.’

  “At once the man saw the error of his ways, and he begged to be taken back in. The Roma laughed. ‘Of course, of course. You only had to ask. All is forgiven.’ ”

  Daniel knew why this story found its way into his memory so often. But he did not believe in the ending. He would never be able to go back. They would take him back without hesitation, he knew this. But what he had done could not be erased, and above all he did not deserve their love. He would never again allow anyone to love him, would never take that kind of chance. Killers do not deserve forgiveness.

  He picked up his suitcase from the side of the bus and walked through the bus station, intending to find the closest rooming house, where he could collapse into a long sleep. He hoped that when he arrived wherever he knew he must go, he would realize he was there.

  In the summer of 1969 a man named Jim Carter was arrested in connection with a string of fires set in San Francisco, California. Upon further questioning, the forty-two-year-old alcoholic confessed to a wide variety of crimes ranging from petty theft to arson. Among the arsons for which Carter claimed responsibility was the Fisher-Fielding circus fire.

  Investigators were initially suspicious. Carter claimed that he had been employed by the F-F during the summer of 1945, and that he had started the fire by holding a match to the side wall of the big top in the area of the women’s latrine. Circus records showed that he had indeed been employed by the show during the time he claimed, although his whereabouts for the day in question could not be accounted for one way or the other. What finally convinced investigators that Carter’s story was true was when he told them of his lighting not one but two matches, the second one several feet from the first. It had never been released to the public, either during the initial investigation or the subsequent inquiry, that the fire had two incendiary points. So, the police promptly charged Carter with the Fisher-Fielding fire. A court judged him insane, and he was committed to an asylum where he died some years later.

  When news of the arrest reached the Ursaris, Salvo didn’t know what to do. Although he had never really thought that Etel had started the fire, he knew that there had always been doubts in his mind. For a long time he could not even bring himself to look at Etel, and finally he felt he had no choice but to confront her. András suspected he might do this, however, and so he intercepted him.

  “What are you going to say to her?” he asked.

  “I will tell her I am sorry. That I never should have doubted her.”

  “How will that help her? She knows nothing of these accusations. Finding out now will only hurt her.”

  “I think she knows,” Salvo said.

  “Are you certain?”

  Salvo considered this. “No.”

  “Well, unless you are certain, you should say nothing.”

  “I owe her an apology. And so do you.”

  “No. An apology is a selfish thing sometimes, Salvo. If we tell her, we will feel better, but she may feel worse. We owe to her that our shame be kept to ourselves.”

  Salvo nodded. András is right, he thought. I will say nothing. Time will take care of our transgression.

  TIME HAD DONE LITTLE to ease the mind of Etel. Twenty-four years had not made the day of the fire any less vivid in her memory, and the smell of smoke or the sight of flame still bothered her. It never occurred to her that this might have as much to do with her experience as a baby as it did the F-F fire. After Carter’s arrest, however, the thing that bothered her even more than the fire was how good it had made her feel to see the guilt in her brothers’ faces when they had realized they had grossly misjudged her. She thought she had long ago forgiven them for their doubts, but when she felt her heart leap at their misery, she knew it was not so. Etel resolved to try harder to forgive them, exasperated when she found that if you have to work at forgiveness it will not come. Many days she was sure it never would.

  SALVO’S DECISION TO RETURN TO THE WIRE was not made as easily as it had been at other times. This time he would be alone, and though Anna had said she would support him in his endeavour, he knew that she did it only because there was no other way, and that her heart was not behind it. If there had been any alternative, Salvo would have stayed on the ground.

  He made a deal with himself. In 1975, six years’ time, he would be sixty-five years old. That was the age that people in North America retired, and that would be the age that he would give up the wire for good. Before, he had always assumed that he would walk indefinitely, and he thought that maybe this had led him to be callous about his time on the wire. He hoped that a realization that his walking days were finite would lead him to a place where he could stop, where he could step off the wire and know it was the last time and feel good about it. To honour this pledge was his resolution.

  Salvo selected, from among many offers, a walk over the playing field between doubleheader Montreal Expos games. Although he had never actually seen a baseball game and didn’t even think he would much enjoy watching one, he had liked Montreal on the one occasion he had visited the city. He also thought it might be nice to hear people speak in a language other than English.

  He was nervous as the ninth inning of the first game began, not sure if he had done the right thing, not sure if he really wanted to walk for an audience again. As he prepared to climb to the wire he looked back at Anna, and for the first time since she had known him, her husband’s eyes did not shine with the anticipation of walking; she saw fear, and only fear. “Don’t worry,” she said.

  Salvo pulled himself together, for Anna’s sake. “I am not worried. I will not fall.”

  “I know. If you were to fall, the world would fall with you, and I know the world will not fall.”

  Salvo smiled at these familiar words, then kissed Anna on the cheek. He climbed up to the platform, and when the third out came to end the ninth inning, he stepped onto the wire.

  Immediately everything receded. All his fears, all his memories, all he loved and all he loathed. His daughters had not fallen; they had never existed. His life was only beginning, and it would end on the other end of the wire, and then it would begin again the next time he stepped out. Salvo smiled, breathed in hard and took another step.

  EIGHT

  Six million years ago the Colorado River began to carve out what would eventually be named the Grand Canyon. Often forgotten is the fact that had this river not travelled through desert, there would have been no canyon. Rainfall would have washed away the canyon’s steep slopes, preventing the feat of nature from forming. This was Salvo’s favourite thing about the canyon, the requirement of desolation for wonder.

  It had come quickly: 1975. After six years of skywalks across stadiums, over rivers, between buildings, and nearly everything a wire could be strung from, his sixty-fifth birthday was nearly upon him, and the time of his retirement had arrived. He had chosen his final walk carefully, and even though there were things about this walk he did not like, it was too good to pass up. Second to crossing between the Canadian and American sides of Niagara Falls, this was the most spectacular walk he could envision.

  At this point the canyon was a quarter of a mile wide and one thousand feet deep. It had been difficult to secure an ungreased piece of cable long enough to stretch across the gorge. Because of the distance, the longest he had ever walked, the wire had to be unusually strong to support its own weight. It had taken crews a week to put the wire into place.

  Salvo was hired to do the walk by a soft-drink company, on the condition that he stop in the middle and drink a bottle of their soda, and
allow this picture to be used in advertisements. Salvo did not like this concession, but there was no other way for him to have the chance to walk the Grand Canyon, so he had agreed. He had waited for the day of the walk with growing impatience.

  Anna viewed the day with more trepidation than Salvo. She was eager for him to retire, hoping against hope that he would finally be able to leave the wire on his own terms, and that their life would be returned to the ground for good this time. Mainly, though, she worried about him falling. Anyone could see that Salvo Ursari was not a young man.

  Two years earlier András Ursari had died after an eighteen-month battle with cancer. His death had been a relief to his family; his final days contained more pain than his entire life had up to that point. There had been much debate as to how to conduct his funeral. András was most decidedly not a Christian, but on the other hand it could not be said that he did not believe in a God that resembled the Christian one in many ways. In the end they held a memorial service, then buried his cremated remains. Etel had not wanted to cremate him, but she remembered that he had once said that cremation was his wish, so she deferred to András’s words. To her, it seemed sad that he had escaped so many fires in life only to willingly go to one once dead. When her time came, she wanted anything but the flame. Sometimes she daydreamed about burial at sea.

  It was at this memorial service that Anna had noticed that none of them was young any more. She noticed for the first time the wrinkles on Salvo’s face, the grey in his hair, the loose skin of his neck, and then she looked to Etel and saw the same. Examining her own hands she saw the hands of a woman far older than herself, and then she knew that somehow her life had gone into its retreat without her realizing it. For no good reason it instantly seemed colder out.

  Since his accident, the feelings of invincibility János once entertained had evaporated. He had been working on the Ursari farm with far more success than Salvo had ever attained. Salvo had all but abandoned farm work since returning to the wire, and as he was now retiring he had no intention of returning to it. Following András’s death, Etel and János sold their house and moved back into Salvo and Anna’s home. It was clear to everyone that the farm would someday be János’s. He was after all the only one who had ever grown anything on it.