Read Online Little Nothing by Marisa Silver - Free Book Online Page A

onstage Pavla curtsies like a girl and then growls like a wolf. She watches the expressions before her turn from surprise to nervous hilarity to a reckless abandonment of manners as both men and women shout insults and throw stones and fistfuls of dirt at her. As always happens, someone complains loudly that what they are seeing is not real, that the girl is merely wearing a disguise, and that they have all been tricked. But a man—and this happens every time because Smetanka pays someone in the audience beforehand—steps onto the stage and, putting his hands around Pavla’s neck, begins to yank on her head in order to unmask her and reveal the face of a normal girl underneath. Pavla shrieks, sometimes with genuine fright, depending on the force or drunkenness of the shill. Now it is Smetanka’s turn to take the stage dressed in a tattered waistcoat and half-stoved-in top hat like the third-rate impresario he is.
    â€œSir,” he shouts over the noise of the audience. “Is she real?”
    â€œShe is real!” the man declares.
    â€œThere you have it, ladies and gentlemen,” Smetanka says. “Behold, the Wolf Girl!”
    â€”
    â€œI’ M OFF TO SEE TO SOME BUSINESS ,” Smetanka announces. The final show of the evening is over. He has tallied the paltry sales, given Pavla and Danilo a few coins each, and left them to clean up the tent. The two are well aware that this “business” has to do with Civan Farkas, the Fattest Man in the World, who brews a putrid but effective trash-can rum, and some cheap and available ladies. When Smetanka finally returns to the caravan, he will either be rageful or weepy or both.
    Pavla is exhausted. It is not that her duties are so difficult or that it takes any effort to remember her part. But in five months she has not gotten used to the dangerous energy of the crowd. During her dwarfish childhood when she was pitied and teased, occasionally accused of being the cause of a spate of fever or a poor crop yield, she never felt what she does now each night: that she is one step away from being murdered. She is, after all, the synthesis of two things men have a need to routinely destroy: animals and women.
    Pavla and Danilo wander the tent, picking up spent cigarettes and broken bottles.
    â€œIt took Smetanka too long to get that man off me,” she says, rubbing her neck. Tonight’s designated attacker was zealous, and she can hardly turn her head to the right.
    It pains Danilo, this charade of violence, the risk to Pavla, and his inability to protect her. Smetanka is surprisingly strong and he prevents Danilo from going back onto the stage to rescue her from whatever brute he’s paid. The crowd has to reach a level of frenzythat will ensure future audiences. He picks up an orphaned glove, tosses it onto the pile of collected trash. “We could refuse to do that part,” he says, but he knows his words are not backed up by any will. It shames him that it is not Smetanka’s strength that holds him back but the threat of being fired. Pavla turns to face him. Although the range of her expressions has diminished since her change, she manages to convey what she means, which is that there is nothing either of them can do to alter the situation.
    â€œI know,” Danilo says. He looks away. He is always looking away even though this is exactly the opposite of what he wants to do, which is to stare into her strange and beautiful amber eyes, to trace their outlines, which angle down toward her nose, to study the variegated hues of the hair that dusts her narrow face. The wolfish features are unmistakable and they would be horrible were it not that he can sometimes, when she looks at him a certain way, or cocks her head just so, see the girl he met at Smetanka’s office so many months ago, the one whose face was so remarkable that he could think of nothing to say to her other than to compare her to ponies. Her eyes were