Marie-Louise Gay - The Traveling Circus

Text copyright 2015 by David Homel and Marie-Louise Gay
Illustrations copyright 2015 by Marie-Louise Gay
Published in Canada and the USA in 2015 by Groundwood Books

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We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) and the Ontario Arts Council

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Gay, Marie-Louise, author
The traveling circus / by Marie-Louise Gay and David Homel.

Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-55498-420-6 (bound). ISBN 978-1-55498-784-9 (html).
ISBN 978-1-55498-785-6 (mobi)

I. Homel, David author II. Title.

PS8563.A868T728 2015 jC813.54 C2014-906794-1
C2014-906795-X

For our Serbo-Croatian friends

My Adventures

Lost and Found

Pigs on Spits

Close Calls

Fish Thieves!

The Wheelbarrow Army

Island of Secrets

The Hermit of Vrgada

Goodbye to the Wheelbarrows

The Day Max Lost His Marbles!

This is how the trip began

The trip where we saw a church as big as an ocean liner, visited an island with no vowels, stumbled across a war-torn village and met the mysterious hermit of Vrgada. The trip where Max and I almost spent our vacation in prison, where we ate krumpir and blitva , but never saw the Leaning Tower of Pizza. The trip where Max got lost at least twice, almost drowned once and was nearly captured by a Minotaur.

It all started on a freezing winters day the day Max lost his marbles. I dont mean that he went crazy, though that happens pretty often.

Max had invented a game with our cat, Miro. It was very simple. Max would throw marbles all over the hardwood floor in the kitchen (for maximum noise and distance). Miro would pounce from the table, the counter or the top of the refrigerator and try to capture them. Meanwhile, Max would do the same thing. Whoever caught the most marbles won.

It was a game that demanded high intelligence and great skill.

Well, this time the stove won. Every single marble rolled under it. I had to lie flat on the floor and try to push out the marbles with my ruler.

On my third try, I fished out a postcard. (Youve got mail!) There was a faded picture of a rocky island in the middle of a turquoise sea.

It was impossible to read the message. The writing looked like a bunch of crushed spiders.

But the picture on the postcard was great. You could almost feel the sunshine beating down on the red roofs of the little stone houses.

Meanwhile, here in Montreal, the snow was piled up to the second-floor window and Im not exaggerating by much!

As if on cue, my parents came into the kitchen. They can smell a foreign place a mile away.

Hey, thats the old postcard from Fred, my father said. The one from K-r-k. Ive always wanted to go to a place with no vowels.

Thats what you said when we got this card two years ago, my mother told him. And we went to France instead.

You want to go to K-r-k? Max asked. How could you go if you cant even say the name?

Ill learn! my father answered.

When he starts getting his enthusiastic voice, and my mother gets her dreamy, faraway look, I get my familiar sinking feeling.

Another family trip to an impossible destination is on the horizon this time to a place whose name no one can even pronounce.

My mother read the card out loud, but I think she was making the whole thing up. No one could read that squished-spider writing.

Dear Friends, she read. We are waiting for your visit. Theres plenty of room for everyone. Well take you to Vrgada, the island where Gordana was born. Meanwhile, heres a picture of Krk. She sends her love and so do I. Fred.

Whos Fred? Max asked.

And whos Gordana? I said.

Theyre old friends of ours, my father said. From a long time ago.

They used to live in Yugoslavia, my mother explained. But the country doesnt exist anymore.

If a country stops existing, where does it go? Does it just drop off the map? Or does the sea swallow it up like the lost continent of Atlantis?

And where do the people go? Do they escape in boats or on foot? Or do they wake up one morning and find out that theyre living in a new country, with new food and different houses?

Where do they live now? I asked.

After the war in Yugoslavia, said my father, sounding just like my hundred-year-old history teacher, the country split into five new countries. One of them is Croatia. Thats where Fred and Gordana live now.

Oh, boy! A country broken up by a war, where people spoke a language with no vowels, and that no one could understand. The perfect place for a vacation!

I dont know about you, but I didnt even know where Croatia was. Though I had the feeling Id be finding out soon. I knew my parents. They just loved visiting a new country or discovering an out-of-the-way place.

Who knows what would have happened if Max hadnt lost his marbles that day?

Sure enough, the next week, when I came back from school, there was a book on the kitchen table.

Serbo-Croatian for Beginners. I sighed.

I wasnt in the mood to learn another language. And I didnt want to go off on one of my parents great escapes to nowhere.

How could I get out of this trip?

I went upstairs and told my brother that we had to figure out a plan to stop our parents from taking us on another crazy family vacation. Then I went to my room and closed the door.

The next minute, Max came bursting in.

I know! Well hide in the basement. Well stock up on food and take the TV down there. They can go on their own!

Poor Max. He actually thought our parents would abandon us just like that.

Dont be silly, I told him. They would never leave us alone.

What if we stayed with Grandma?

Theyd say shes too old to take care of us.

Then we could take care of her, Max suggested. When she loses her keys or her glasses or her shoes, I could find them for her.