No Stars at the Circus Read online

  Table of Contents

  Notebook: 1

  Why I Have Written a Will

  24 August 1942: My Friends, The Corrados

  25 August 1942: How to Write a Story

  So Here is the Beginning!

  26 August 1942: Papa and Our Shop

  Our Home

  My Sister

  27 August 1942: The File We Were Not On

  The Potato Bugs

  28 August 1942: Why We Had to Move From Our Home

  Goodbye to Our Home

  29 August 1942

  31 August 1942

  The Street of Lions

  1 September 1942: More German Rules: Parks Verboten!

  Papa, Mama, Nadia and Me: The Scientific Facts

  How the Germans Got to Know Who is Jewish — and How We Learned to Fool Them

  2 September 1942: Here is an Announcement

  Gathering Winter Fuel

  The Day Papa and I Went Out Together

  How I Met Signor Corrado and La Giaconda

  3 September 1942: Feasts

  Lessons

  6 September 1942

  The Basking Sharks

  This is the Last Chapter of the First Book

  Notebook: 2

  6 March: Double Date!

  We Set Out

  The Show

  The Rest of the Show

  The Very, Very Small Circus of Luigi Corrado

  Trouble

  Tommaso’s Ears

  1 October 1942

  4 October 1942: New Clothes

  Sunday Afternoons at the Fair

  The Amazing Flea Circus of Jonas Alber

  The Knock at The Door

  Hiding

  An Emergency

  And the Date Was …

  This is What Happened on 15 July 1942

  Tommaso

  No Way Home

  What Happened on 16 July 1942

  Keeping a Promise

  20 October 1942

  23 October 1942: Albatrosses

  Notebook: 3

  Beginning of November 1942

  10 November 1942: Out of Africa

  What the Policeman Knew

  The Salmon of Knowledge

  Who is Gregoire Volet?

  Last Chance

  The Woman in the Fur Coat

  Gone, Gone, Gone, Gone, Gone

  Underworld

  Home

  Correspondence

  Somewhere

  For John

  MY WILL

  This is the Last Will and Testament of Jonas Alber.

  In the event of my death, my money goes to Mama. If you can’t find her, it’s to be kept for Nadia.

  I leave all my clothes to La Giaconda for her son, Tommaso, who is my size, though he is younger than me. I leave my flea circus to Signor Corrado because he showed me how to train the fleas. I don’t have any of the fleas here, in case the Professor gets upset about them, but I have all the carriages with me. They are made of real silver. Papa put proper hallmarks on them, so they are worth a fair bit.

  If the key to my home at rue de la Harpe can be found and if our belongings are still there, I leave all my books to my friend Jean-Paul Lambert. He can have my roller skates too, which are under the bed, and my globe, which is on the windowsill. Those are the only things I have left, except for my comb. If Alfredo wants that he can have it.

  Signed Jonas Alber, aged ten years.

  23 August 1942

  TO THE PERSON WHOSE JOB IT IS TO READ WILLS

  I wrote and signed my will at the Professor’s house, 12 rue Cuvier, Paris 5, but my family’s address is 10a rue des Lions, Paris 4. Before that we used to live at 31 rue de la Harpe, Paris 5, over my father’s shop. That is where our piano is still but it belongs to my mother, not to me, so I cannot leave it to anybody.

  Please check everywhere for all our belongings and keep them safe for my family. My papa wrote a will and testament when the war began, so look out for that too. I saw it once in his desk. That’s how I knew the way to write mine.

  I know that a testament is also a story. The rest of what I write will be that kind of testament. You can read it if you like but it’s really for Mama, Papa and Nadia, wherever they are. It will explain what I’ve been doing since I last saw them.

  That was nearly six weeks ago.

  J.A.

  NOTEBOOK

  1

  WHY I HAVE WRITTEN A WILL

  I am living in rue Cuvier now because Signor Corrado brought me to see the Professor yesterday. He fixed it up for me to come here and be safe. So far, I have been safe in this house for exactly one day.

  The Professor was my mother’s music teacher when she was young. Signor Corrado knew where to find him because of the card Mama gave me, with the Professor’s name on it, and where he lived. So we came here early yesterday morning, on Papa’s bike.

  Signor Corrado knocked on the door of No. 12 quite loudly. He hadn’t said a word since we’d crossed the bridge. I think he was nearly as scared as I was. But you wouldn’t have known that from what he said when the thin old man opened the door. He held it wide open, not like most people do – leaving room for only half their face to look out. His was very bony.

  “You are the professor of music, Monsieur?” Signor Corrado asked. “This man?” He showed him Mama’s card. I swear he sounded every bit as rough as a policeman.

  The old man nodded but he said nothing. So Signor Corrado lifted my arm up in the air as if I was a boxer who had won a match and said, “This is Jonas Alber, whose mama was once the Mademoiselle Anne Berlioz you will remember so well, of course. Can we come in?”

  It was pretty rude to ask that straight out when you’d just met someone. Nobody lets strangers into their house now.

  But the old Professor waved us inside, anyway. Even though you could see he was still blinking away at the sight of us. Even though Signor Corrado had an ordinary jacket and trousers on – nothing striped, no bows or rosettes.

  When the door was closed and we were in the hall, Signor Corrado didn’t waste any time. He just told the Professor it wasn’t safe for me to stay with his family any longer.

  “You know the reason as well as I do, Monsieur. That rabble is working night and day to ferret out any poor souls they missed catching last month. They’re scum. I’m not afraid to say that and I’m sure you’re not afraid to hear it, being a cultured man.”

  The Professor opened his mouth but he said nothing. Again.

  Signor Corrado pointed at my head. “Look at the boy’s hair! Look at mine!”

  He tried to comb his hair with his fingers but they got stuck in it, like they always did.

  “What would you think, Monsieur, if you were one of them? Would you say we looked like family?”

  We don’t. I have fair straight hair and all the Corrados have black hair as thick as wire, so I don’t even look like their second cousin ten times removed. So all these weeks, Signor Corrado had kept thinking the Germans would come one day and pounce on me and take me off to a jail, or somewhere. It’s true they could have, because the fairground is open even when there’s no show on. And everybody who works there knows everybody else. They know who belongs and who doesn’t.

  They know I don’t.

  But Signor Corrado didn’t mind that. He has a great trust in the fairground people.

  “Artists don’t tell tales, Jonas,” he told me. “Life is too dodgy for us. We need one another. No, the real problem is other people. One of your old neighbours might pass through here one day and recognize you.”

  Well, no Jews were going to come to the fair any day soon, so that ruled out good old rue des Lions. And all our neighbours from before are too old, or they work too hard or else they have no
money to come to the fair.

  I told Signor Corrado that but he only wrinkled his nose. He said there were lots of people who might tell the Germans about me just to get some extra food coupons for their families.

  But in the end it was no neighbour. It was Pimply Arms who gave me away. He hated Jews. That was when I had to leave the Corrados.

  Anyway, Signor Corrado told the Professor all these things. He started off with what had happened on that day in July. The reason I was living with his family.

  He said, “We just don’t know where the boy’s family was sent to. We became his second family. Now, Monsieur, I’m asking you to be his third.”

  I looked around while he was talking. The walls were painted the colour of red cabbage and there was a row of small pictures along one of them. The only one I could see properly showed a green wind-up bird on a shelf. Mama had told us about that picture!

  At the end of the hall there was a long set of stairs going up and a short staircase going down. There were no names or numbers on any of the doors I could see and they had no locks. So did the Professor live here all on his own? With all these rooms to spare?

  He must, because suddenly he said yes. Just yes. I knew that meant he was going to take me for a while but it also meant he didn’t have to go into any of the rooms to ask anybody else if they thought it was a great idea to have Jonas Alber coming to live with them.

  Just him and me then. In a huge house. What would that be like?

  But he was staring at me.

  “You look like your mother, Jonas,” he said. “I remember her as if it was yesterday, the day she came to my door. She was so small for her age but she had such promise.” He coughed and cleared his throat. “All right, you can stay here until we find somewhere better for you.”

  Signor Corrado shook hands with him. “You’ll know where to find me, Monsieur,” he said. “Everyone knows me at the fairground in Nation.”

  He pressed my head against his chest as if it was a brand-new football he was testing. He kissed the top of it. Then he was out the door and gone. If he’d looked back through the letterbox for a joke he would have seen the Professor and me staring at the door. We must have looked like two dogs locked out in the rain, except we were locked in and Signor Corrado was the one outside.

  But he didn’t look. I suppose he just got back on Papa’s bike and cycled home.

  So here I am. And that’s why I wrote my will on a separate page. It’s in case the Germans storm in here and find me after all.

  24 AUGUST 1942

  MY FRIENDS, THE CORRADOS

  I was sorry to leave the Corrado family for three reasons:

  No. 1 – Because they are very kind people.

  No. 2 – Because I was able to show off my fleas and their tricks at the fair and earn some money. If I say so myself, my fleas were very well trained. And Signor Corrado said he had never seen anything as beautifully made as the carriages Papa made for my flea circus. He would lift them up and stroke them.

  “Bellissima,” he said every time. In Italian that means not just beautiful but really beautiful. The Corrados are Italian but they can speak pretty good French, even Tommaso, who doesn’t say much in any language unless it’s about football.

  Papa told me the carriages were in the style of Louis Quatorze, the Sun King. My sister Nadia said they look as if they had rolled straight out of a fairy tale. She said they were shrunk by a spell and one day it will wear off and we will have real silver carriages to ride in. She’s always thinking mad things like that.

  When we were sick together in the same room I let Nadia use the carriages in her puppet theatre. But not with the fleas, of course. They stayed in their box.

  The box with the carriages is now in my coat pocket. Which is now in the trunk under the window. Which I’m not allowed to look out of, even though this room is right up at the top of this huge house.

  But who’d see me? There’s a big canvas curtain right across the window. I could peep out. No problemo. That’s what Tommaso used to say when he was kicking a goal from a corner.

  I bet you can see lots from up here. This used to be a maid’s room in the old days, the Professor said, long before he bought the house. Poor old maid. Maybe she had the best view in Paris but there are no wardrobes or dressers in the room, just the skinny old bed and the trunk.

  And everything that belongs to me has to go into the trunk.

  “Just in case,” the Professor said.

  In case what? I wanted to say. In case the Germans track me down?

  I suppose I’m to get into the trunk as well, if he can’t stop the Germans from rushing upstairs. Because none of them would be smart enough to guess there was a boy in the trunk.

  Ha ha.

  He didn’t say that, of course. He said I had to be completely quiet all the time even though the walls of the house are so thick. Nobody must know I’m here, he said, not even a mouse.

  “But there are no mice. I’m pretty sure of that, Jonas.”

  That was supposed to be a joke because he smiled. So I smiled too.

  At least the window looks out onto the street. Even if I’m not allowed to look out of it I know that much. I can hear street sounds – carts going by, people shouting, that kind of thing.

  The thing about the trunk is all a bit daft anyway because he brought things up for me and he said they needn’t go into it. He gave me a grammar work book, some ordinary pencils and a long thin propelling pencil that has a tiny hot air balloon going up and down inside the glass. He told me one of his students left it behind last year. He also brought up a mathematics book, a mythology book and two encyclopedias. One is A–L, the other is M–Z. He says he has books about the lives of the great composers too, if I would like to read them.

  There’s a piano downstairs in this house. I saw a bit of the keyboard through a door when we came up here yesterday. I’d love to play it but guess what, I’ll never be able to because he’s afraid to let me come down from this pokey room at the top of the house.

  He says that’s because he has no papers for me. But nobody has, except Mama and Papa. Not even Signor Corrado had my papers. Unfortunately, that was what made him even more worried about me.

  “If you don’t have papers you’re finito, Jonas,” he said.

  It is a big problem. I don’t blame anyone for being afraid.

  Maybe the Professor will get braver later on. If I do everything he asks it might encourage him. He is a little like one of those long thin caterpillars that stand up on their back legs and wave their heads at you but are squishy if you stand on them by mistake.

  Maybe he just doesn’t like having a boy in his house. Maybe it’s nothing to do with me not having papers.

  Anyway, the good news is that I have four big notebooks from the Deyrolle shop to write in. Signor Corrado gave me the set as a present. Three of them are in the trunk. One is on my lap but it’s going under the mattress when I’m finished writing this. My will is folded inside the beginning pages.

  When I was with the Corrados in their yellow van I used to sleep on cushions under Alfredo’s bunk. Madame Fifi’s bed was behind a curtain but even so I could hear her poodles every night. I never knew dogs could snore like that. I suppose they sounded so loud because I was on the floor and so were they. They had fleas too but they were not trained like mine were. They were stupid dog fleas!!!!

  I made notches under Alfredo’s bed to mark how long it was since I’d seen my family. There were five when I left, one for every week. Now I have scraped five new notches on one of the legs of this bed, where the Professor will not see them. Two days from now I will make the sixth.

  I almost forgot! The third reason I was sorry to leave the Corrado family: they were lots of fun to be around.

  25 AUGUST 1942

  HOW TO WRITE A STORY

  Monsieur Lemoine, the French teacher in my old school, told us that when we write a story we should start at the beginning, continue as far as the middle and then
get to the finishing tape without losing our shorts or our shoes. He said it’s not as easy as it sounds.

  I probably won’t have Monsieur Lemoine again for class because I will be going to the collège next and he will stay behind. He likes me. He says I have a spirit of adventure that would serve a pirate well.

  But he ruined that when he said, “Of course, very few teachers will appreciate this quality of yours, Jonas. Especially if you are late for school because of your nefarious activities.”

  He wrote down “nefarious” in my copybook. It means “bad”, but what he was talking about was the school day he saw me in the Luxembourg Gardens when I was helping to set out the chairs for the puppet show. Stéphane, who owns the puppets, used to let me watch for free if I did that for him.

  But that was in the old days, when we lived in rue de la Harpe. When I went to school.

  SO HERE IS THE BEGINNING!

  I won’t start with the war, or with the Germans sneaking into France, because everybody in the whole world knows about those things. Anyway, I was much younger then. I didn’t know so much about what was going on. I remember the gas masks Nadia and I had and how Mama got so cross when we played with them, especially if Jean-Paul was there too. Which he was a lot because he was my best friend. He liked to come to our place because he had no brothers or sisters.

  “Gas masks are not toys, they’re meant to save your life,” Mama shouted at us. “And Jean-Paul has his own at home to play with if he wants to.”

  We pretended we were giant insects because the masks had big buggy eyes. But when you breathed in with the mask on, it made a noise like a cave monster, not an insect.

  Then the summer came and nearly everyone in Paris ran away because the Germans were coming. Even Jean-Paul’s family packed up and left. We didn’t. Papa said he wouldn’t leave our shop to be looted by Germans. “Or anybody else,” he said.

  There was one horrible day when a big cloud of black smoke came down on Paris and it rained black rain. That meant the invaders were here at last because the car factories outside the city were burning. Mama said it was like the end of the world with all the boots tramping everywhere, and the filthy devil’s fog that was made of rubber smoke.