Birthday? Who apart from city folk and Jewish boys remember their birthdays?

"Wait here,” Felix says, and he leaves them standing, uncertain, on the grass. They watch the people mass together, filling the cold air with puffs of white as they talk and smoke. Hannah gives a long sigh. This is the third circus they are visiting. Felix is impatient to get back to work, muttering about Wolf and some kind of agreement. A weariness has settled into her bones. Only Emmy is alert and intent and in good cheer.

Felix returns a few minutes later, clutching three tickets. The Greatest Show on Earth.

“The show proper starts in an hour,” he says, tucking the tickets into his leather wallet. “We have time to investigate what we’re really here for.” He points to a smaller tent set up in the adjoining field. Hanging from the red canvas is a large, painted sign: But First, the Strangest Things on Earth.

Hannah steps forward. One step. Another. Ignoring the sudden cold that’s crawled over her arms and back, penetrating the thick protection of her wool coat and cashmere gloves, and even the fur muffler that Ernst gave her.

Felix steers them through the crush of coats and scarves and gloves, of ringletted hair pinned up under hats, of cigarette smoke and cheap perfume. He waves their tickets at a man sitting at the entrance and pushes them into the tent.

Hannah blinks. It is dark inside, though the place is well lit with gas lamps. There is a strong smell, not unpleasant, exactly, but too many people and not enough cool air. As her eyes adjust, she sees that the tent is a long rectangle divided into many separate areas.

A sudden crowd pushes in front of them, and Hannah stares. Just ordinary faces. There are no eyes that flash cruelty or flaccid lips that tell of selfishness. Why not, after all, see the strangeness of some people? If not for the fact that this tent might shelter her sister, she could be just another woman in the crowd.

They are surely fine-enough people — men who care for their wives and mothers who make their daughters practice the piano and wash their faces before going out to play. There is nothing that marks a thirst for horror, and yet there they are, all of them, waiting to ogle at the unfortunate freaks that nature — or G-d, if you like — has created.