Katharine Tarvainen
St. Gregory the Great and St. Bede Writing Groups
In the summer of 1920, a quiet young man arrived in the small New England town of Phillipsburg with a single suitcase and a pair of spectacles. The suitcase didn’t hold much, and the eyes behind the glasses couldn’t see much, but their deficiencies made them all the more precious to the man who possessed them.
As he walked from the train station to his boarding house, a group of children raced past, chattering and laughing with excitement. Looking after them, the young man saw that they were headed towards a field outside of town where a large tent was blooming from the sun-scorched grass like a candy-striped mushroom. The circus, it seemed, had also just arrived.
The Bandling Family Circus was run by Bobby and Bella Bandling, siblings, who, unlike their entertainments, rarely sparked delight in those who came to see them. Bobby claimed the spotlight as “Roberto” the Ringmaster, while Bella claimed the cash. Bella was particularly attentive to the revenue-rich sideshow acts, which included a sword-swallower, a bearded lady, and a snake charmer who had an equal, if not greater, skill at charming young ladies. The most popular attraction, however, was Seraphina the fortune teller.
When the circus opened that evening in Phillipsburg, the line outside of Seraphina’s tent was much the same as it was in every town: long and predominantly female. Young women sought the future, eager to see if their fates lay with longstanding sweethearts or handsome strangers, while widows and mothers sought the past, desperate to know if their beloved dead lay in peace among the poppies of Flanders.
One by one they entered the dimly-lit tent and met Seraphina, seated behind a table with a glowing glass orb. Despite the dark eyeliner and lipstick she wore, she was clearly quite young, which made it all the more shocking when she spoke, for her voice bore a deep, husky resonance entirely at odds with her small frame. As they emerged from the dark tent, the hopeful brides-to-be and the sorrowful brides-that-were blinked in the harsh glare of the artificial fairground lights, clinging to prophecies of future lovers and final wishes, willing them to be real.
During a quiet moment, Bella came bustling into Seraphina’s tent, an anxious mother hen coming to check on her adopted golden egg.
“How are the spirits this evening, my pet?”
“Same as always,” Seraphina sighed. When she wasn’t sounding forth prophecy, her voice had a decidedly softer tone, much like any other sixteen-year-old. She reached to loosen the scarf wrapped about her head, but Bella stopped her.
“Please, Auntie Bella, I have the most awful headache . . . ”
“It’s just hot in here, my darling. Go out back and get some fresh air.”
Outside the tent, the air was thick with humidity and mosquitoes. A limp breeze carried the slight tang of ocean brine, along with the sounds of laughter and the oompah of the organ from the big top. Within Seraphina’s head, however, was the familiar buzz of discordant voices, like radio static. Night after night, as she sat in her tent, the voices would coalesce into prophetic transmissions which Seraphina then broadcast to her visitors.
Her head throbbed as the hum of voices increased their pitch. She felt drawn towards a gap in the tents and, peering out, spotted a young man wearing spectacles. A child’s balloon popped nearby and Seraphina watched as the man froze, a slight tremor moving up his hand and arm.
Seraphina winced as the voices in her head became frantic, growing louder until their message came pouring out of her as she stepped out into the open:
“This man is a Servant of God!”
The bespectacled man stopped and turned pale as his hand flew to his throat.
“Ex-excuse me?” he stammered, his trembling hand fingering the knot of his necktie.
“We know who you are! Have you come to preach Salvation?” the commanding voice echoed again from Seraphina.
The young man opened his mouth, shut it, and then ran away, nearly upsetting a popcorn cart in his panic. By now, Bella had emerged from Seraphina’s tent and hustled her inside as Seraphina continued to shout “Servant of God!” after the fleeing young man.
“What are you doing?” Bella demanded when they were back inside.
Seraphina had gone quiet and leaned, panting, against Bella.
“You know how I feel about preachers,” Bella continued, depositing Seraphina in her chair.
“I’m sorry,” Seraphina said softly, “I couldn’t help it.”
Bella sighed heavily and straightened Seraphina’s shawls.
“I’ll give you five minutes,” she said. “You’ve gathered quite a crowd, and we mustn’t keep them waiting.”
* * *
Just before dawn the next day, Seraphina left Bella snoring in their shared caravan and crept through the sleeping circus to the edge of the fields. She felt restless. Sitting on an old stone wall, she watched the sky slowly brighten. The road into Phillipsburg ran beside the wall and, looking down it, Seraphina could see a church steeple towering over the dark rooftops of the town, the cross at its pinnacle silhouetted against the pale, blushing pink of the sky.
The morning peace was broken by the rising urgency of the voices in Seraphina’s head. She turned, just as the same bespectacled young man rounded a bend in the road, walking towards town. Seraphina stepped into the road and called out in a deep voice:
“Servant of God! Are you here to speak of Salvation?”
The man stopped and stared at Seraphina as she strode towards him. A hateful smirk twisted the girl’s face as she said, “We know what you are! Why do you hide, priest?”
The man swallowed hard and said, “I-I was a priest. I mean, I am a priest, I just . . . ”
“You hide from Him as you hide from us. Who, then, do you serve?”
“I-I serve the Lord . . . ”
The priest raised a hand to his forehead, lowered it to his chest, but then dropped it, trembling, to his side. Seraphina laughed and her eyes narrowed.
“So you say, yet still you hide!”
The priest remained silent as he clasped his trembling hands together. Seraphina stepped closer.
“He allowed them to die,” she said, “Precious life annihilated before your eyes. Who could save them? Not you! But why didn’t He?”
“I beg you . . . stop,” the priest said, his shaking hands now clenched together so tightly his fingers grew white.
“Where was your God?”
“Please . . . ” the priest’s voice caught, and he sank onto his knees in the road.
Another sharp bark of laugher echoed from Seraphina, and the priest looked up at her. The rising sun cast an eerie crimson glow upon the girl’s face, and in it he saw so many others he had known: bloodied, scorched, and staring, sightless, beyond his help. Now before him was another young life, another fluttering, fragile, eternal soul trapped by forces so much more powerful than he. He too felt trapped, pinned down by his broken body, his broken spirit, the whole broken world.
“Lord, have mercy,” he whispered, as he raised a shaking hand and slowly crossed himself.
Suddenly, there was a flash of light behind the girl’s head. The cross atop the church had caught the light of the sun and blazed forth, dazzling the priest’s eyes. In that moment, with a sudden, luminous clarity, he understood the power in his weakness.
Slowly, the priest stood up from the dusty road and raised a steady hand, outstretched towards the wretched girl. Then, with a voice so like his own, and yet with a new authority, he called out, “In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to leave her!”
Seraphina let out a piercing shriek and crumpled to the ground, just as Bella came lumbering across the field to see what all the fuss was about.
* * *
When Seraphina awoke, she was back in her bed with Bella’s face looming above her.
“My darling!”
Seraphina blinked and tried to sit up.
“Where is . . . ”
“That preacher? I chased him off, the scoundrel.”
Seraphina could hear the rushing, pulsing sound of her own heartbeat in her ears.
“Auntie Bella!”
“Yes, pet?”
“The voices! They’re . . . gone.”
Bella’s face drained of all color.
* * *
That afternoon, the snake charmer was very put out.
“Why is Bobby cracking the whip to get moving now? I had a date!”
“He and Bella were fighting like cats this morning,” said the sword-swallower.
“Seraphina would know why.”
“Have you seen her?”
“No.”
* * *
All that long, hot afternoon, the children of Phillipsburg left their games and chores to watch with sorrow as their circus dreams collapsed in a candy-striped heap and rolled away down the road.
In the center of town, below a steeple with a cross glistening in the late summer sun, a young priest in a starched, white collar knelt in the cool quiet before the altar. His single suitcase lay on the floor beside him, with a pair of spectacles tucked inside. In a pew a few rows back, Seraphina lay sleeping peacefully, her face radiant in the sunlit patterns of stained-glass saints.