Prince of Prague

The Last Grasshopper

The clowns were the first to go. I was staring out of our window,
watching the falling snow begin to cover the elephants, when Beppo, the
head clown, came bursting into the caravan.

'Vladimir,' he cried. 'It's a disaster.'

My father put aside his tobacco and rose to his feet, an unlit pipe
still clenched between his teeth. He strode over to Beppo and took him
by the shoulders.

'What's happened?'

'I've just come from Nicolai,' said Beppo. I could see real tears
beginning to well up behind his made-up crying eyes. 'He's closing the
circus. Two weeks, that's all we've got, Vladimir.'

'You're shaking, Beppo! I'll fetch you some schnapps.'

'He says the moving picture houses are taking all the people away. That
no-one wants to see us any more. I can't believe it, Vladimir.'

As he comforted his friend, my father motioned for me to close the
door. I stood on the threshold for a few seconds, savouring the
contrasting smells of the ice-cold air coming off the river and the
warm smokiness of the fire in our hearth. I had my hand on the handle
when Beppo turned one of his big clown feet the wrong way and sent my
grasshopper bowl smashing to the floor of the caravan.

'The grasshoppers!' I dropped to my knees and tried desperately to
catch them as they leapt to freedom.

'Get up, Katerina,' shouted my father. 'There's broken glass on the
floor.'

'But they'll die outside,' I said. 'I've got to catch them.'

He grabbed me, then, and lifted me straight off the floor, inspecting
my struggling hands and knees for cuts. As the last of my grasshoppers
jumped from the caravan, I felt a warm bead of blood trickle slowly
down my left shin.

'I'm sorry, Katerina,' said Beppo. 'Perhaps they'll come back to the
warmth in a few minutes.'

'We've got more important things to worry about than grasshoppers,'
said my father, checking whether I had any glass embedded in my knee.
There was a sharp brief pain and he held up a tiny glittering shard for
me to see. 'We must talk to Nicolai.'

'If you speak to him,' said Beppo, 'perhaps he'll listen.'

'We'll talk him round,' said my father, setting me down and picking up
his heavy fur coat. 'We have to.'

They crunched glass into the caravan's floor as they left, carrying
some of it with them on to the icy path. I waited until they were out
of sight then ran outside. The grasshoppers had left a confusion of
tracks in the snow - I picked one and followed it carefully for about
thirty yards, until I came to the circus owner's caravan. I heard two
familiar voices raised in argument and stood on tiptoe to look through
the bottom of the misted rear window.

'They don't want to come to the circus any more,' said Nicolai, taking
a long drag on his cigar. 'I just can't afford to keep us going. It's
that simple.'

'People love the circus,' said my father. He pointed to an old poster,
showing him as The Human Grasshopper, leaping from platform to platform
high above an excited crowd. He was different in the picture - his long
hair was still blonde, then, and his muscles gleamed with strength.
Over fifteen years ago, long before I was born, the circus had played
for a month in the Opera House. On the night of the last show, my
father leapt from a standing start to the royal box, over thirty feet
up from the stage. He carried a rose in his teeth for the queen and
made himself famous throughout Europe for his incredible skill and
daring.

'People love the circus,' he repeated. 'They'll be back.'

'They used to love it, Vladimir.' The circus owner paused and ran a
hand through his hair. 'They used to love us all. But not any
more.'

In the caravan, nothing moved behind the swirling haze of Nicolai's
cigar smoke. I turned to leave and there, on the ground in front of me,
was one of my grasshoppers, twitching feebly in the snow. I lifted it
up and breathed gently on it, but within seconds its movements slowed
and stopped. It felt like a brittle shard of glass, hard and lifeless.
As I closed my hand around it, a tear fell from my cheek and burned
through the snow to the dead ground beneath.