Rain Village - Carolyn Turgeon [107]
As for me, the world outside our train car no longer seemed to exist. Mauro kept pressing wet cloths to my forehead and bringing me plates of food, but the fever did not let up. I felt like I was drowning, caught underwater where all I could see was Mary’s face next to me, staring at me through a tangle of weeds. I tried to pull myself up toward Mauro’s voice and hands, but for those three weeks I could go only where the fever took me—deep into the river, to where the thousand colors of the opal stone glittered from Mary’s neck.
The day my fever finally broke, a stranger showed up at the Velasquez Circus. We had arrived at a new lot only hours before, and had begun the laborious task of setting up the entire circus and midway, starting with the big top itself. The lot was mostly empty of townies except for a few of the usual autograph-seekers. But when the man with the sleek cat’s eyes set foot on the lot and started striding purposefully toward the tent, we all knew he was no normal kind of fan. He looked like someone out of a story, with his tall, lanky body and dark hair, his soft green eyes and cruel, curving mouth. He had a bit of gypsy in him, too; his long black coat scraped against his knees as he walked, and his boots were black and scuffed. A camera hung from his neck, a large duffel bag from his back. Drawn by a strange sort of feeling that lifted me from my bed and to my window, I threw open the curtains just in time to watch the stranger striding into the big top.
“What is it?” Mauro asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “A stranger has come.”
I realized then that my skin was drenched in sweat, no longer burning the way it had been for twenty-one days straight. Suddenly I could not stand the four walls of our train car; every fiber of my body was bursting to get outside—to the sun, the air, and the big top, where the stranger waited between the open flaps. I did not even know why I was so compelled; a sort of panic had come over me, filling me only with the desire to get to the stranger as quickly as I could. I raced to get my clothes on.
Mauro and I rushed out of our car to find Lollie standing outside, dressed in her best blue flowered dress with long, draping sleeves and a swishing skirt.
“Did you notice,” she asked, “that the breeze has stopped?”
Inside the tent, the oppressive atmosphere outside gave way to an electric kind of excitement as circus folk of every stripe crowded around the stranger. The whole Vadala family was there, all the brothers, Geraldo, the twins, the new contortionist act from China, the clowns. I could hear his voice—a rasping, rich sound with an accent that spoke of verbs so complicated they would take years to learn. A terrible feeling of déjà vu came over me as we approached the middle of the tent, though we’d gone through these motions a thousand times before, a stranger showing up with a bit of news or a story to tell that’d make the children’s mouths drop and set all our hearts to racing. We were all eager to hear of life in the cities and towns we passed through but never inhabited, and we treated these travelers and storytellers like royalty on the lot, lavishing them with front-row seats, hot meals, and a privileged spot by the bonfire, where we always gathered to listen.
This time something felt different. Perhaps it was the breeze he came in on or the two kiwi-colored eyes that hit me like pistols as I approached, but I knew