FOTO-FICTION OF THE DAY

I was the middle child:  the center coat button that never got done up, the navel that caught all the lint, the voice drowned out by the higher and lower registers.  Anything left undone by the elder and younger was foisted upon me, who seized and performed every lowly and demeaning detail, happy to be noticed.  I couldn't afford to be lazy and mischievous like Marko and Yanko, my younger twin brothers, or vain and aloof like my older sister Mirela.  If I wanted Papa to notice me, I had to be servile and available, capable and resourceful, and of course, watchful and crafty.  Perhaps above all, I had to be smart, and in this respect owed a debt of gratitude to Fortune for having given me the brains and my siblings the looks and the talent, so called. It was due mainly to the charm and performing abilities of my siblings that we were able to scratch a living out of the stingy natives of the tiny burgs we passed through.  We threaded our way through the larger cities more quickly, and at times could take in a pretty sum while there, but those cities boasted shows far grander and more entertaining than anything our small family circus, with our modest talents and antiquated tricks, could stage along the roadside or on a vacant parcel of land.  In those places, what we did amounted to begging, and Papa was too proud to abide much of that, however empty our bellies.  Besides, often we'd hardly even begun making camp when city authorities appeared to give us the bum's rush.  So we spent the majority of our time playing to the rubes; our performances drew little from their pockets, but much from their hearts and tongues in the way of appreciation and advertising, which made all the difference in our ability to persevere and even thrive, both physically and emotionally.  For it didn't take one long to discover, especially in our line of work, that it was not only the body but also the spirit which required nourishing.  There was a time when Papa had known it better than any of us.

 

But Papa hadn't been the same since the day Mama died while bringing the twins into the world.  He became a shadow of his former self and it seemed all he could do just to rise each morning and greet a new day, much less lead and care for his children as he had always done.  So Mirela and I had been forced to become parents to the twins and nursemaids to Papa, who, in time, emerged from his fog enough to resume his role as master puppeteer, once again manipulating the strings upon which his offspring danced for the public's pleasure and for their own survival.  Thank goodness we possessed the credulous and resilient nature common to children the world over, combined with the far less common pluck and flair for histrionics.  And one cannot discount the motivational power of hunger alone.

 

The twins grew older and became skilled at juggling, tumbling, dancing, and comic improvisation.  They did somersaults both forward and backward, they could walk on a wire, balance upside-down on a ladder, walk on their hands, and perform many other amusing acrobatic stunts.  Mirela danced on her toes and glided with the grace of a swam, she floated like an angel in flowing white with her pretty face and nails painted, her pert young breasts set off to advantage, and with an appearance so pure and chaste that she would cast a spell over the men in the audience and bring ugly grimaces of scorn and envy to the faces of the peasant women, prematurely aged by lives of drudgery.  But all the faces would change when Mirela would flit ethereally to the large wooden disc attached to the back of our cart to which Papa would then bind her hand and foot, spread-eagled as the saying goes, and begin throwing his large knives.  You could hear the gasps of the audience each time a blade sank with a sharp rap into the wood only inches from Mirela's soft and supple flesh.  Anyone looking at her at any other time could never begin to suspect the sort of iron nerve that lay hidden beneath that delicate feminine exterior.

 

Then there was me.  And what did I contribute, one might well ask.  In a word:  magic.

 

I had begun with simple card tricks, then progressed to tricks with fire, tricks with rings and scarves, tricks with small animals vanishing and reappearing, tricks that could be done with cheap and easily available materials and performed in front of a small crowd on the side of a road or in the center of a town square.  I was good, I knew it and the audience knew it.  But more importantly, I performed the magic that held the show together in the absence of Papa's strong leadership.  I created the slate of acts and the order in which they were performed, I drove my siblings to rehearse until they cursed the ground I walked on, I planned the places where we would perform, charted out the itinerary according to which we made our slow and laborious way through the often bleak and desolate landscape of eastern Europe.  I managed our finances, obtained and prepared our meals, and became the family spokesperson when dealing with village authorities who were initially antagonistic and eager to see our backs.

 

I did all of this and more—me!—frail little Angelina!

 

But everything I had done before paled beside all I would do after.  After what, you ask?

 

It was a very cold morning in February, near the eastern Macedonian border, one month before my fourteenth birthday, when Papa failed to awaken. And in spite of all the magic I had learned and could perform, I simply could not restore life to his cold stiff corpse. What I could do, however, was give it a proper burial and keep the show going, keep his children fed and cared for, and never surrender to the demons of despair, never acknowledge the mists of misfortune that had claimed Mama and Papa and continued to loom threateningly all around us. We, after all, were The Amazing Miroshnikovs!

 

And so, we forged ahead without Papa. By this time, Eduardo with his fiddle had joined us. One rainy evening in a village somewhere along the eastern hem of Hungary, he had appeared out of nowhere, taken one look at Mirela, and been with us ever since. There we were, five young people, all still children really, but unified by means of some mysterious alchemy that turned our modest endowments and efforts into something that kept us alive and relatively content.

 

It was a sad day when our old nag Jakob, who had pulled our cart for many years, suddenly keeled over dead. He had been ill, it was true, but the end still came as a surprise. There we were, the five of us, discussing our next move. Where would we go and how would we get there? I had no doubt we would prevail. I would work a great magic, if need be. And when the shabby looking gentleman came up, kindness in his eyes, and asked if he could make a picture of us, what reason had we to refuse? Our plans were, at that moment, somewhat uncertain.

 

 

D.E. Sievers